Group 3 courses

Students should note that 100% attendance is expected and that various colleges will de-register students whose attendance falls below their required minimum.

Group 3 courses are 'special subjects' with a strong emphasis on the study of primary sources. Part at least of one paper in each course will be devoted to historical evidence and these questions will be compulsory for all candidates.

Most courses have an introductory meeting for new students in June of the preceding academic year and resume in the following Autumn term.

Note for courses held at Birkbeck College: Birkbeck students have priority registration and will be examined by one written paper. Students from other colleges will in addition be examined by a 10,000 word essay, if this is required by their School's programme. Assessment for coursework will vary according to the regulations of individual colleges.

The Assyrian Empire

Karen Radner

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3106

A key player in the political geography of the Ancient Near East since the 14th century BC, the kingdom of Assyria had its heartland in what is today northern Iraq. In the course of the early first millennium BC, Assyria emerged as the unrivalled political power of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean and came to control, directly or indirectly, the regions from Egypt to central Anatolia, from Cyprus to the Persian Gulf and from the Arabian Peninsula to Central Iran. Its modern designation as the first world empire matches the worldview of its rulers who habitually claimed the title of ‘king of the world’. The course will focus on Assyria’s political, administrative and institutional history from the 10th to 7th century BC, involving a close reading of documents from the State Archives of Assyria, of royal inscriptions, of chronicles (available online: http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/chron00.html) and other relevant source materials.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Sensing the Renaissance, 1400-1650

Dr Hannah Murphy with Dr Kathleen Walker-Miekle & Dr Paolo Savoia

Available in 2018-19

King's: 6AAH3061-62

Since the publication of Jakob Burckhardt's Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy in 1860, the Italian Renaissance has been a defining mainstay of Western Europe. The rediscovery of the classics, the immense creativity of Leonardo and Michelangelo, the intrigue and scandal of politics - taken together these have represented the dawn of secularism, creativity and the individual. But how did Renaissance Italians actually experience their world, and which of these conceptual changes had ramifications beyond the borders of Italy? Using the innovative field of sensory history as an entry point, this module reimagines the traditional Renaissance as an explosion of bodily experiences. Touch, taste, smell, vision and sound were fundamental components of the products and practices of Renaissance art, politics, religion, medicine, and domestic life. Over the period, changes in the way these were imagined, practiced and constrained gave rise to new theories and new practices, from hands-on exploration of the natural world to confessional systems of beliefs. Shifts in the cultures of the senses took place across the European continent, and were shaped by encounters with the new world and the consumption of goods from the east. They involved every level of society and implicated not just both genders, but the construction of gendered norms too. Focusing on the senses allows us to write a Renaissance 'from below', but it also gives rise to the way in which concepts of self and other, above and below took shape.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Love and Fear: Political Thought and the Passions in Italy

Serena Ferente

Available in 2018-19

King's: 6AAH3073-74

This module investigates the relation between political ideas and understandings of human emotions in late medieval and Renaissance Italy. Ancient pagan and Muslim traditions of thinking about emotions – from the philosophy of mind and rhetoric, to ethics and medicine – powerfully influenced later political thought. A correlation was often evoked between human nature (body and soul, reason and passions) and the forms and principles of political life. After an overview of major Greek, Latin and Arabic sources on the role of the passions in political life, this module explores the complex and varied debate around emotions, their value and their use for political purposes. We will examine changing understandings of the role of love, fear, ambition and greed in the public and political realm. We shall examine the works of writers and artists such as Aristotle, Seneca, al-Farabi, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, Dante and Giotto, Lorenzo Valla and Machiavelli, Leo Hebraeus and Tullia d'Aragona.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Young Lives: Growing up in Liverpool, London, Melbourne and Sydney, 1870-1970

Alana Harris

Available in 2018-19

King's: 6AAH3069/70

From the late nineteenth century onwards, the imperial cities of London and Liverpool, and Britain’s newer outposts in the Australian colonies, were urban settings dominated by children and young people. As these cities grew at an unprecedented rate, this was reflected in a disproportionately youthful demographic profile. Within Britain and especially within the colonies – which were themselves conceived as the mother country’s offspring – there was a popular fascination with ‘growing up’ in the city, alongside associated aspirations for (and ‘moral panics’ about) the best ways to socialise and civilise the next generation. Profound urban change prompted governments, social reformers, intellectuals, civic institutions and legal authorities to try to find ways to shape and constrain, encourage and celebrate the protean potentialities of those born or newly arrived in the city. In this module we use a thematic, life-stages approach to examine what it was like to be born and grow up in four different urban settings and across a century characterised by increasing mobility and accelerated change. Topics covered will include comparative explorations of modes of living, learning, loving, working, playing, belonging and navigating these distinctive but imperially connected cities. Particular emphasis will be given to how the gendered, classed, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds of young people of different ages influenced their experiences and enjoyment of city life. The sources scrutinised for this excavation will include memoirs, media, surveys and social investigations, municipal correspondence and records, photographs, fiction, film and the spaces and places within which the young were defined, and sought to define themselves.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Ancient Warfare: Assyrian and Greek perspectives

Karen Radner and Hans van Wees

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST31xx

The primary sources available to study warfare of the Assyrian Empire and in the Greek world are equally rich but very different: royal inscriptions, palace wall decorations, state letters and oracle queries on the one hand, epic and other poetry, historiography and military manuals on the other. This new and unique course will apply a comparative approach to such matters as reasons, alternatives and responses to war, logistics, tactics and battle experiences, patriotism and imperialism.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

War and Society in Ancient Greece, 750-350 BC

Hans van Wees

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

UCL: HIST3105 and HIST9105

This course investigates all aspects of war in its social context in archaic and classical Greece - from the causes of conflict, via the question of how to train, raise, maintain, and control citizen and mercenary armies, to the range of forms of warfare from ritual clashes to campaigns of annihilation. In particular, the course tackles some of the myths current in modern scholarship: the notions that war was the 'normal' state of international relations in Greece; that the citizen army was an essentially 'middle-class' body; that warfare was restricted to a game-like competition in the archaic period and became a destructive 'total' conflict only in the classical period; that the Athenian navy drove the development of radical democracy; and that the 'mercenary explosion' of the fourth century was a result of economic and political crisis in the Greek city-states. How the Greeks fought has been much-debated in recent research, and this too will be the subject of detailed study.

A crucial aim of the course is to provide an understanding of how Greek warfare was shaped by the social, economic, and cultural constraints of its time, how it developed, and why wars were so common in ancient Greece.

A second aim of the course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to tackle this challenge, by enabling them to study the sources as coherent narratives while analysing their implications for any and all aspects of Greek war and society.

Students are expected to have passed at least Beginners' Greek, or an equivalent course, but all sources will be read primarily in English translation. Students are also expected to have completed at least one course in archaic and/or classical Greek history.

Students will be required to write two 1,500-word pieces of source analysis during the first term and one 3,000-word essay on a topic to be agreed with the tutor during the second term and to make two class presentations, one in each term. Assessment will be by one three-hour examination (100%) and one 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

This course may not be taken by students who have already taken the former Group 2, Warfare and Society in Ancient Greece 750-350 BC (UCL: HIST2102).

This Side of the Taurus: Seleukid Kings and the Cities of Western Asia Minor

Riet van Bremen

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3103 and 9103

This course deals with the almost-century between 281 (Kouroupedion) and 188 BC (Apameia), during which major conflicts between Seleukids and other Hellenistic dynasties were fought out in Western Asia Minor. The region's cities had to adapt rapidly to new power-structures and new forms of diplomacy. Networks of royal officials developed through whom kings communicated with local communities. Several dossiers showing such chains of command survive. Among important developments of this period are the many enforced sympoliteiai, the specific, Hellenistic, form of asylia, kinship diplomacy, and arbitration by 'foreign judges'.

Despite the lack of a continuous historical narrative for much of this period which makes reconstructing the course of 'high politics' largely impossible, epigraphical documentation is considerable, and growing. Several recent collections have made access to what used to be widely dispersed source material now possible. They are most easily available for those parts of Asia Minor that were, for large parts of this period, under Seleukid rule.

A knowledge of Ancient Greek is desirable; students without Ancient Greek should consult Dr van Bremen before opting for this course. The course will be examined by one three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Alexander the Great

Hugh Bowden and Lindsay Allen

Not available in 2017-18

King's Classics: 6AACHI13

Alexander the Great (reigned 336-323 BC) is one of the most important figures in the history of the ancient world, both because of his achievements and because of his iconic status in subsequent history. The course examines Alexander’s life and achievements, including his generalship, his approach to empire and his religious activities. It also examines his posthumous reputation, from immediately after his death to the present day. As well as the accounts of ancient writers, more recent representations of Alexander will be looked at, including those in art, novels, and film. It requires substantial amounts of reading of the sources in preparation for all classes.

The course will be assessed by one three-hour unseen examination and a 10,000-word essay.

The Intellectual Landscape of the Late Roman Republic

Valentina Arena

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST31xx

The course investigates the conceptual languages, analytical tools, and pivotal terms at work in the dominant intellectual traditions of the first century BC in Rome. Through the reading of works by Cicero, Varro, and Caesar (three prolific writers of the time as well as prominent protagonists in contemporary political life), which will serve as a mirror of the sophisticated and diverse intellectual world of the first century BC, the course will reconstruct the major intellectual controversies of the time - such as, for example, the origin of human language, the role of divination, and the study of psychology. With particular emphasis on political thought, the course will explore the fascinating ways in which the most prominent intellectual figures of the time, some of whom have now almost disappeared from our sight, interpreted inherited Greek traditions or acquired ways of thinking, and subverted and moulded them into new forms in order to answer contemporary questions and solve new problems.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Temple Life in Assyria and Babylonia

Eleanor Robson

Available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3109/HIST9110

Temples were at the economic, social and intellectual heart of urban life in Assyria and Babylonia in the first millennium BC. Although they were in many ways highly conservative institutions, we shall see that they were also the drivers of fundamental intellectual innovation, through observation, calculation and prediction of natural phenomena, whose impact is still felt in mathematics and science today. This module will draw on a wealth of architectural, material and textual evidence to investigate the people, gods and animals whose lives and livelihoods depended on these enduring institutions. We will explore the following major questions. How were the gods conceptualised and to what ends? Who served as priests and what constituted priesthood? What was the theology behind their activities? How did temple communities support themselves economically? How did they manage relationships with the palace, and what happened when things went wrong? How did temples engage with wider urban society, through public ritual, charity and personal devotion? How did they negotiate the major historical changes of the first millennium BC, and with increasing religious plurality?

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Between Order and Disorder: Cities in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World

Patrick Lantschner

Available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3207/HIST9207

This Special Subject explores the tension between order and disorder in the great cities of the late medieval Mediterranean world – Cairo and Milan, Venice and Jerusalem, Damascus and Florence. We will contrast and compare cities across the Mediterranean world during an era which saw violent confrontations, but also economic and cultural exchange between the different civilisations which met in the region of the Great Sea.

Cities stood at the heart of these interactions. They became the centres of emerging states, stood at the crossroads of networks of contact and exchange, and were sites of major new directions in art and culture. However, underneath the picture of order, harmony and progress were high levels of conflict and fragmentation which manifested themselves through frequent revolts and civil wars, the marginalisation of particular social groups, and religious divisions that culminated in outbreaks of violence. We investigate the degree to which such apparent disorder was itself an ordinary feature of life in cities, and explore the political, social and religious systems which lay behind the complexity of urban life in the Mediterranean world.

Rather than investigating them in isolation from each other, cities will be studied from an integrated perspective that considers connections and comparisons across real and perceived divides between Islamic and Christian civilizations, as well as national and linguistic boundaries. We shall especially focus on Italy and the Near East, the Mediterranean world’s most urbanised regions, but we will also look at Iberia and the Ottoman Empire. Our sources range across the writings of prominent thinkers from these cities such as Machiavelli and Ibn Khaldun, chronicles and narratives, governmental and court records, and the wealth of surviving visual and material evidence.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Life-Writing: Memory and Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe

Diana Georgescu

Available in 2017-18

UCL, SSEES: SEHI3012

After decades of focusing on structures and broad processes in history and society, history has since the 1980s taken a turn to write the personal back into history. Familiarizing students with the “biographical turn” in history as well as in the social sciences and humanities more broadly, this course will explore the ways in which modern lives were experienced, remembered, and narrated in the turbulent 20th century. We will draw on a wide range of life narratives – whether biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, oral histories, diaries, or letters – to examine the possibilities and limits of the genre for writing the history of modern Europe, particularly its eastern margins. Rather than focusing on “important” people such as leaders or politicians, we will deal with ordinary men and women, whose lives did not unfold under conditions of their own making, but who nevertheless claimed agency in the process of living and writing history.

Many of the readings assigned for class discussion focus on Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia and/or are produced by actors from the region. The sources are clustered around some of the major historical developments of the twentieth century: the two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the Cold War division of Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. As a result, the readings provide insights into the twentieth century as a period of rapid political change and social displacement, which altered our notions of time and space and led to increasingly fragmented lives. They also raise broader theoretical questions that students are encouraged to further pursue in their dissertations. These include questions about the relation between identity and memory, memory-making and history-writing, remembering and forgetting, or about the epistemological and moral dilemmas of recovering “buried memories” or “silenced voices.” Because these questions have been at the centre of not only historical, but also literary and anthropological research, our exploration of the twentieth century through the lens of ego-documents will be an interdisciplinary venture intended to train students as self-reflexive historians.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Mechanisms of Power: Running the Roman Empire c.70BC-AD275

Benet Salway

Available 2016-17

UCL: HIST3104 and 9104

What held Rome’s provincial empire together through political revolution, civil wars, and crises of succession? This course focuses on the administration and management of this international empire of the pre-industrial age. The core of this course comprises the study of selections from the considerable volume of surviving documents produced in the dialogue between the central government, its provincial representatives, citizens, and subjects. Deliberately eschewing the position of Augustus and his successors as the sole reference point for the system by which Rome governed her empire, the starting point for the investigation is placed in the post-Sullan period. The end is drawn with the provincialisation of Italy, which heralded the beginning of the establishment of a new order in which urbs Roma was now part of rather than mistress over her empire.

Some knowledge of ancient Greek and/or Latin is recommended – although translations will be provided for all texts, a precise appreciation of the language can only be acquired by studying the original. Previous study of Roman history is also recommended.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Augustus: Power and Propaganda

Dominic Rathbone

Not available in 2017-18

King's Classics: 6AACHI07

The subject of this course is the establishment by Augustus of the autocratic regime known as the Principate, and the political and social consequences in Rome, Italy and the empire in the period 31 BC to AD 14. The primary aim is to study and to attempt to distinguish between the realities of power and the ways in which Augustus sought to influence public perception of his position through constitutional arrangements and written and visual media. Among extant evidence the later historical accounts of Augustus’ reign are fundamental, but close attention will be paid to contemporary poetry, inscriptions, coinage and art and architecture, and in particular to the Augustan building programme in Rome in the light of recent archaeological research.

Examination is by one three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words. In the essay candidates will be required to discuss in depth the evidence for a particular problem using and quoting texts in Latin or ancient Greek; some knowledge of Latin or ancient Greek is therefore required.

The Roman Army

Boris Rankov

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/CL3357A and CL3358A

This course looks at the Roman army as an institution by close study of the primary sources – literary, papyrological and epigraphic – in translation, together with the archaeological evidence. It surveys the army’s origins and development under the Republic, but focuses mainly on the Principate, covering its personnel, organisation and operation in war and peace, but also its central role in the administration and policing of the empire and impact on provincial populations.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and by a dissertation of 8,000-10,000 words.

Visions of Europe: Political and Intellectual Readings of European Integration from the Interwar Years to the Present

Dr Andrea Mammone

Available in 2017-18

RH: HS3386/HS3387

Europe, as an “ideal” and imagined landscape, is a very old concept. Its stories have crossed the long history of humanity, including emperors and ordinary people, revolutions and nation-building, powers and paintings, and legends and tales. What often impressed past observers was the deep richness and brightness of these European cultures, their diversity and yet also their many common values. It was against this background, after the interwar years, that European countries started a process of peaceful integration, establishing the Council of Europe and, above all, the European Union. This course focuses on the journey towards the unification of many European lands, exploring how this united Europe was built, and especially how it has been perceived by political movements, politicians, and scholars both in previous decades and in the present. Discussion will centre around the interactions between geographical spaces, cultures, historical frames, and intellectual conceptions. Can we talk about a European identity? How is the EU seen by contemporary observers? Why has this community of Europeans been built? How is it also a contested space? From exploring such questions, students will gain a better understanding of European history, policies, values, and society, and therefore a better understanding of the world in which we live in today.

Drawing the Line: Independence, Partition, and the Making of India and Pakistan

Professor Sarah Ansari

Available in 2017-18

Monday afternoon (tbc)

RH: HS3376/HS3377

The course aims to provide students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of South Asia as the subcontinent made its transition from colonial rule to independence during the first half of the twentieth century. By contexualising a pivotal moment in its recent history, namely the partitioning of the subcontinent that accompanied British India’s independence in 1947, students will be able to engage with the complex processes involved in both the rise of anti-imperial nationalist movements and the decline of (British) imperial power. The eventual transfer of power, albeit to two states - India and Pakistan - represents one of the first instances of decolonization in the British Empire, and it proved to be a particularly fraught and violent process with long-lasting repercussions for both South Asia as region and wider global history. Hence, the course merges political history with social, cultural and religious history - it looks at change and continuity from a top-down perspective as well as interrogating it from below. This approach allows students to explore the high level political negotiations that produced independence as well as to engage with the lived and often painful personal experiences of partition. Major themes include the rise of nonviolent and violent Indian anti-colonial movements; ethnic and religious representation in Indian politics; British imperial strategies; the relationship between religion and nationalism; the impact of world war; migration and partition violence (that was often gendered); and the challenges that both states faced when it came to creating new citizens.

Progress and its Discontents: European Culture, 1890-1914

Dr Daniel Beer

Not available in 2017-18

Monday afternoon (tbc)

RH: HS3378/HS3379

In 1914 the French poet Charles Peguy wrote that the world had changed more since he started going to school in the 1880s than during the previous two millennia. Rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, the rise of mass politics and the decline of the established religions all ensured Europe was in a state of political and social flux during the fin de siècle. Established hierarchies and authorities - the partriarchal authority of the father, the sovereignty of emperors, kings and parliaments, the self-confident economic rule of the bourgeoisie, the spiritual leadership of the European churches - were being challenged by the rise of new ideologies of liberation: secularism, occultism, nationalism, anarchism, socialism, feminism. The course will adopt a thematic approach to explore a range of topics through which Europeans endeavoured to make sense of, and navigate a path through, this changing world. Visions of change were shot through with ambivalence. Optimism about the creative powers of the market and faith in technological, material and political progress were undercut with darker apprehensions of disorder, decline, and decay. Politicians, journalists, artists, scientists and writers fiercely debated ideas of race, class and gender and wove a richly varied imaginative tapestry that reflected on the unstable world around them. Their conflicting prescriptions for political, social and moral reconstruction showed that the very shape of the modern world was "up for grabs". The course content will be resolutely comparative in focus, emphasising the pan-European dimensions of topics such as ‘Degeneration’, ‘Terrorism’, ‘the Colonial Imagination’, ‘Anti-Semitism’, ‘Modernism’, and ‘the Cultural Geography of the City’. The aim is not to offer a comprehensive history of a continent but rather to highlight central themes and questions that resonated from St. Petersburg to Paris and from London to Budapest. Students will be expected to write essays and a dissertation that embrace a minimum of three European states or national cultures within the great continental empires.

Christians and Pagans from Constantine to Augustine (AD 306-430)

David Gwynn

Not available in 2017-18

RH

This course explores the crucial transitional period in which Christianity came to dominate the Mediterranean world, from the accession of the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine in 306 to the death of Augustine of Hippo in 430. Students will explore the fundamental political, social and religious developments of these years through the close study of literary and material evidence. Particular attention will focus upon the great authors of this period, including Constantine’s biographer Eusebius of Caesarea, the last pagan Roman emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the orator Libanius, and the Christian fathers Ambrose of Milan, Jerome and Augustine. We will also examine lesser known writers such as Ausonius, Prudentius and Claudian, the laws of the Theodosian Code, inscriptions, and an array of surviving examples of Late Roman art and architecture.

Assessment is by coursework (20%), an oral presentation (10%) and a three-hour examination (70%); and an essay of 10,000 words (100%).

The Fall of the Roman Republic

Valentina Arena

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3101

As the Roman Empire expanded, it became harder for the lower orders to gain access to the rewards of victory, while competition within the oligarchy became more intense. The peasant armies of Rome were drawn into the conflicts born of this competition and the Republic dissolved into anarchy. The course will also explore three other themes: the ideology of the governing class was one which facilitated change, including the abolition of republican government. At the same time, the central period of Hellenization of the oligarchy was the period of escalating competition which destroyed the system. The last generation of the Republic was a period of astonishing innovativeness in fields as diverse as Latin poetry and Roman law. Finally, the period is also one which saw the beginnings of philosophical analysis of Roman history and society. That process is part of the story of the replacement of a republic by a monarchy.

The course will be examined by a three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Romans and Barbarians: The Transformation of the Roman West 350-700

Peter Heather

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3001/6AAH3002

In the past, the end of the Roman Empire was always seen as a brutal if sometimes necessarily formative turning point in European history. By the fourth century, the Roman system had lost its vitality, and outsiders – barbarians – erected alternative structures in the west which were much more directly ancestral to medieval and hence modern Europe. Since about 1970, however, new evidence has shown that the late Roman world was neither so decadent nor so broke as had always been imagined, and this has reopened debate on the nature and significance of its disappearance. Were the barbarians really outsiders to the Roman system, and were the states they created on Roman soil anything more than the old Empire in new guise? The Transformation of the Roman World explores this major transformative period in European history in all its dimensions – political, economic, and cultural – and seeks to come to an overall judgment on its broader historical significance.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Popes, Caliphs, and Sacred Law, 385-850

David d'Avray

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4pm

UCL: HIST3206 and HIST9206

The central theme of the course is the rise of a papal law in late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, but the history of the early Caliphate and the genesis of Islamic Law will be studied as well to generate comparative questions and observations. Because there is a shortage of translated sources for early Islamic Law (and because the source problems are very tricky anyway) this side of the course will be studied principally from scholarly secondary sources. Particular attention will be paid to the theory that in the early centuries of Islam the Caliph was the authoritative interpreter of the sacred law, and that displacement of this ideology and practice with the system that broadly still obtains in Sunni Islam, viz., interpretation of the Law by the scholars learned in Shari’ah (with all their disagreements). Thus Islam begins with a system resembling that of papal Christianity, but turns into a system resembling Protestant Christianity.

The rise of papal law will be studied intensively from original papal decretals, many of them translated especially for the course. Concepts drawn from Social Anthropology (Mary Douglas, Louis Dumont) and Sociology (Max Weber) can help us to do so from the inside. As this emphasis on social structure implies, the course will adopt an analytical rather than a narrative approach to this formative period in the history of the papacy.

Assessment is by a three-hour examination (100%) and a 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

Medicine on the Silk Roads: Traditions and Transmissions

Dr Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

GC: HT53208A/B

While history of medicine is usually taught focusing primarily on either ‘western’ or ‘eastern’ traditions, this course will focus on transmissions of knowledge along the Silk Roads. More than just routes on which missionaries, travellers and merchants moved between east and west Asia, the Silk Roads has become a metaphor of east-west connections. This course will deal with Asian medical traditions as they are represented in manuscripts found in sites along the Silk-Roads, primarily the Dunhuang caves and Turfan. The discussion of these medical traditions will be contextualised within the multi-cultural aspects of the Silk-Roads and within processes of transmission of knowledge along the Silk Roads. The course will also deal with the historical background leading to the discovery of the Silk Road sites and with how the internet is transforming research of the Silk Road.

The primary sources used in this course will mostly consist of manuscripts found in Dunhuang (in translation from Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese and Uighur) as well as visual material and artefacts from the Silk Roads. The texts and artefacts mostly date from the later centuries of the first millennium.

The course will include a visit to the British Library to see some of the Dunhuang manuscripts and meet with some of the International Dunhuang Project staff. It will also include a visit to the British Museum to see some of the artefacts and artwork from Dunhuang.

Assessment is by a two-hour examination (50%); a 2,500-3,000-word essay (40%); 500-750 word gobbet (10%); and one 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

Carolingian Europe, c.750-900

Alice Rio

Available in 2016-17

King's: 6AAH3023/6AAH3024

This module will concentrate on Western Europe during the reigns of Charlemagne and his successors. The Carolingian empire was a period of bold political experimentation and a key formative moment in the history of Europe. It was marked by important developments in political thought, and turned the exercise of royal power into an ambitious new project. New challenges in the practicalities of ruling fundamentally altered the rules of the game. The course will feature, among other themes: territorial expansion and its abeyance; the problems faced by kings in controlling an empire which spanned most of Europe, leading to a new, more administratively-minded style of rule; ways of establishing consensus and keeping the peace at the level of both centre and locality despite relatively light-weight state structures; the use of ritual; the written word and the revival of learning; Christian kingship and monastic and church reform; and the relationship of kings and emperors with the papacy. The Carolingian period witnessed a significant growth in aristocratic power, combining office-holding, local power and family strategies: alongside the activities of kings, this course will also examine the nature of the control over property and people exercised by lay and ecclesiastical lords, and the material underpinnings of political power. The module will rely on a wide range of sources, from Einhard’s classicising biography of Charlemagne to the dark account of civil wars given by Nithard, from Dhuoda’s book of advice to her son to annals, poems, letters, laws and capitularies, sermons and liturgy, archives and documents, manuscripts, art and architecture, and archaeology.

Assessment is by means of one three-hour examination paper and one 10,000-word essay.

The Norman Conquest of Britain

Tbc

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3003/6AAH3004

This course represents a unique opportunity to study one of the most cataclysmic events in the history of these islands. It aims to consider the causes, course and consequences of the Norman Conquest of Britain in a series of twenty seminars. The first of these will cover the major phases of conquest: England and Normandy before 1066, the claimants and their claims, the campaigns of 1066, resistance and rebellions, and Norman colonisation of England, Wales and Scotland. Subsequent seminars will address the impact of the Norman Conquest on different aspects of government and society, for example land tenure and lordship, military matters, secular and religious architecture, kingship, queenship, government, law, the church, the economy, the formation of national identities; and on different social groups such as the aristocracy, women and the peasantry.

This range of engaging subject matter is one reason to opt for this course, but there are several others: the profusion and richness of the sources; the modern relevance and resonance of this material, and the opportunities for meaningful research it creates; the quality of the historiography; and an optional field trip to Normandy.

Assessment is by means of one three-hour examination paper (50%) and one 10,000-word essay (50%).

Passages to Jerusalem: the Crusades and the Medieval World, 1095-1291

Antonio Sennis

Available in 2016-17

UCL: HIST3205 and HIST9205

Few features of the Middle Ages are as familiar, even to the most profane of observers, as the series of expeditions which, throughout the 12th and the 13th centuries, aimed at establishing Christian control of the holy lands. Although the word crusades was not used in the Middle Ages, in the course of the centuries the term has become a powerful tool to evoke policies and aspirations of an entire society. This course aims at observing these expeditions, and the world in which they took place, from a cultural perspective. In doing so, we will shed light to some key aspects of Western European society in the 12th and 13th centuries, such as the religious and political ambitions of the papacy; the new devotional aspirations of the laity; the development of a chivalric culture; the cultural expansion of parts of Western Europe.

The course will be examined by a three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Saladin, Richard the Lionheart & the Third Crusade

Tom Asbridge

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6710 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

Saladin’s defeat of the Franks at Hattin and his subsequent conquest of Jerusalem on 2 October 1187 prompted Latin Europe to launch the Third Crusade. Across the West, tens of thousands took the cross for this expedition, among them Richard the Lionheart, king of England. The war that followed saw Saladin and Richard – two great champions of the age – contest control of the Holy Land. This special subject module explores the careers of both leaders and the wider history of the Third Crusade, drawing upon the testimony of Christian and Muslim contemporaries. Topics examined include: the role of jihad in Saladin’s rise to power; the progress and significance of the siege of Acre; Richard’s standing as a military genius; the nature of negotiation and diplomacy during the crusade; and the roles of myth and memory in constructing Richard’s and Saladin’s historical reputations.

The course will be examined by a three-hour written paper, two essays, and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, c.1140-1300

Jonathan Phillips, Peregrine Horden

Available in 2017-18

RH: HS3150/3151

Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) dedicated his pontificate to defeating the enemies of the Church. A profound challenge came from the Cathars of southern France – men and women who followed an austere lifestyle and believed in a Good God and an Evil God. When, in 1208, a churchman was murdered, Innocent unleashed the full force of the crusade; a decade of war followed as the northern French crusaders tried to defeat the heretics. After 1218 the conflict acquired a new dimension as the Capetian monarchy tried to extend royal authority into the south. In the late 1220s, the papacy unveiled a further weapon in the war against heresy: the Inquisition – the use of interrogation and close surveillance of communities to root out heresy. A rich body of contemporary material survives to illustrate all aspects of this struggle: narratives, Church decrees, letters, inquisitorial records, charters and songs.

Assessment for the taught unit is by one three-hour examination (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,000 word essay.

Genghis Khan and His Empire, 1150-1300

Evrim Binbas

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3361/3362

This course examines the life of Genghis Khan and the history of the Mongol Empire that he founded in Eurasia between 1150 and 1300. The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in world history stretching from China to Poland, and from Indonesia to Syria. The military power projected by the Mongol armies was unforeseen up to that point in world history, and the social and cultural impact of the Mongol social and political institutions deeply and permanently transformed the societies that came under the rule of the Mongol khans. Although the public perception of the Mongol Empire is such that it was equated with the barbarian invasions of late antiquity, the truth is that this remarkable state formation story happened under the full gaze of contemporary historians writing both in Mongolian and in the languages spoken by the subjects of the Mongol Empire. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the formation and eventual dissolution of the Mongol Empire at the end of the thirteenth century is one of the best documented imperial state formation stories in pre-modern history. In this course, students will first walk in the footsteps of Genghis Khan from his childhood to his rise to eminence in steppe society, and then they will analyse his conquests through the lens of indigenous Mongol sources, including the celebrated Mongol chronicle The Secret History of the Mongols, and the sources written by those who were defeated by Genghis Khan in the course of his remarkable conquests. Finally, they will analyse the gradual evolution of the Mongol Empire from an empire into a commonwealth in which separate Mongol states were loosely tied together around the name of Genghis Khan and his lineage. The course offers an extraordinary variety of readings in English translation that were originally written in Chinese, Mongolian, Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Armenian, Latin, and Old French, and presents a fascinating first-hand insight into Genghis Khan’s life and time.

Assessment for the taught unit is by one three-hour examination (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The dissertation unit is assessed by a 10,000 word dissertation.

Reform and Rebellion in England, 1215-1267

David Carpenter

Not available in 2017-18

King's: 6AAH3005/6AAH3006

The period between 1215 and 1267 determined the future shape of monarchy in England. The king became limited by Magna Carta but overthrew more radical restrictions on his authority. This paper considers how Magna Carta became implanted into English political life and why it was supplemented in 1258-59 by more radical schemes of reform, schemes which placed central government under magnate control and introduced wide-ranging changes in local government. The paper then examines in detail the period of reform and civil war between 1258 and 1267 to see how the king ultimately destroyed the limitations imposed in 1258. The paper is thus concerned with the personality, policies and government of King Henry III, the careers and outlook of his leading opponents, of whom the greatest was Simon de Montfort, and with the whole nature of English political society in the thirteenth century. A knowledge of Latin is not necessary for this paper but may be put to good use by those who have it.

The examination will consist of one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Scotland: the Making of the Medieval Kingdom

Alice Taylor

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3035/6AAH3036

The status of Scotland as a single political unit is of key contemporary concern, both to UK and European politics. This module examines the very early history of Scotland from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century. During this period, a coherent 'kingdom of the Scots' emerged, headed by a single king, and run according to uniform governmental structures that resembled those in England but in no way replicated to them. But the autonomy of this kingdom was fragile: the death of Alexander III without an heir in 1286 ushered in a period where the elite of Scotland had to fight for the kingdom's existence against the ambitions of Edward I and Edward II of England, who sought to conquer the Scottish kingdom as Wales had been. Yet, despite this fragility, the Scottish kingdom endured, and part of the reason for this was the emergence of a remarkable sense of their own identity, most obviously manifested in the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, one of the most engaging documents to have survived from medieval Britain. The module will consider how the kingdom of the Scots developed from a very small territory, containing a multiplicity of peoples (including English and Britons as well as Scots), to one where a single people (the 'Scots') were seen to be the ancient inhabitants of a kingdom growing in power and resources that had existed from time immemorial, whose autonomy was worth defending. To understand this phenomenon, we will look at sources as diverse as chronicles, charters, saints' lives, biographies, law, coins, letters and declarations to the papacy. We will look at who the Scots thought they were, and how this changed at a time of intense political pressure. The emphasis throughout will be on close reading of the primary evidence, all available in translation. By the end, students will understand more about the weird and wonderful world of medieval kingdom formation and also how fixed notions of identity developed and were used and exploited by those in power.

The examination will consist of one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Slaves on Horses: State and Society under the Mamluks

Dr Yossi Rapoport

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6711 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

The Mamluk dynasty, which ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517, is mostly known for the rule of foreign Turkic military elites, recruited through the institution of slavery. Yet, with scholars like Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi all working in Mamluk Cairo and Damascus, it was also a period of cultural and religious renaissance, which shaped the intellectual landscape of Islam. It was also a period of great changes: the demographic catastrophe of the Black Death and the changing patterns of diplomatic and commercial interaction with Christian Europe. This module will look at the unique political structures of a self-perpetuating slave elite, at high and popular culture, and at the remarkable artistic and architectural remains, in order to present a rich, multi-layered picture of medieval Islamic society in its heyday.

The course will be assessed by primary source analysis (1,500 words), essay (3,500 words), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

The Enthronement of Learning: Medieval Universities and their Legacy

Dr Peter Denley

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HIST6110

Universities were a medieval creation, and a large part of what we think they are for and how they operate hails back to medieval times. The aim of this course is to investigate how this situation arose; how the institutionalisation of higher education rapidly became so comprehensive, and how medieval academics built the privileges, the systems and ultimately the myths about the academic world that constitute the legacy of the period. The course will cover all three of the traditional ‘branches’ of university history (institutional, intellectual and social). Topics covered will include: the growth of law, medicine, theology and arts; the emergence of universities at Bologna, Paris and Oxford; the development of a university system across Europe; ‘old’ and ‘new’ universities; universities and politics; universities and the state, the church, and their host towns; paradigms of ‘town’ and ‘gown’; the financing of higher education; colleges; curricula, forms of study and patterns of learning; books; degrees, careers, professions and elite formation; university life and ritual; images and self-images of students and teachers; the medieval student experience; universities and humanism; the medieval legacy of concepts and ‘myths’ of academe.

The course will be assessed by primary source analysis (1,500 words), essay (3,500 words), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

European Cities, 1100-1600: Cooperation, Creativity and Competition

Professor Miri Rubin

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HIST6113

European towns and cities are medieval heritage alive in Europe today. In cities cooperative living developed, based on economic freedoms and political autonomy. Cities and towns attracted merchants, migrants, pilgrims, students - all drawn to the possibilities that urban centres alone could offer: education, training, trade, enterprise and freedoms unavailable in rural society. Cities were centres of religious life where some of the finest art, architecture, literature and music were created. They were also ethnically diverse. This Special Subject will explore how cities were created, managed and sustained. It will do so by treating small towns as well as magnificent cities such as Siena, Paris, London, Florence, Venice, Bruges, and Prague.

Exhibiting the First World War

Dr Dan Todman

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6745 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

Exhibiting the First World War involves students in an in-depth, wholly original investigation into the history of specific areas of London in the period 1914-18. Students are introduced to the topic through seminars on the history of the capital at war, before commencing their own research projects on the experience of Londoners at war. These make use of a wide variety of source materials, including local archives, newspapers, and digitized military service records. There are site visits to archives and to locations of interest. Drawing on their research, students will create innovative public history, curating virtual tours on a dedicated module app. This module includes an element of collaborative work - you should expect to work with other students.

The course will be assessed by source analysis (2500 words), review of previous years’ work (1000 words), group research project (2000 words), group tour, collection of source data (2500 words) and a dissertation (10,000 words).

The Idea of 'the West': A History from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century

Professor Georgios Varouxakis

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6746 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

This module analyses the history of different ideas of 'the West' from its earliest uses in the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. This history will be studied from the perspective of both ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ thinkers and authors. Students will gain a deep and many-sided mastery of a concept with a long history, which is highly relevant to contemporary debates and ways of thinking, and yet is rarely defined or analysed historically. The main contribution of the module will be to problematise and historicise the concept of the West and show when it emerged, why, and how meanings have changed over the last two centuries. The module is ambitious in its analysis, its geographical and cultural coverage, and its aim to develop students’ historical perspectives and critical skills. .

The course will be assessed by essay (2000 words), essay (3000 words), examination and a dissertation (10,000 words).

England in the Reign of Richard II

Nigel Saul

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/HS3131 and 3132

This course looks at the reign of Richard II from as many angles and in as many aspects as possible. In the first term the concern will principally be with politics, and each stage of the reign will be looked at through the eyes of the chroniclers. In the second term consideration is given to a variety of thematic issues, among them Lollardy, courtly literature and art, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the role of Londoners. It is an advantage, although not essential, for a student to have studied the relevant English and European papers. Virtually all of the set texts are available in English translation.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words (100%).

Faith and Fire: Religious Culture in England c.1375-1525

Clive Burgess

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3139/40

This course scrutinises an area of English social history that was once universally disparaged. Recent work, however, suggests that the Church in England from c1375-c1525 displayed remarkable resource in adapting to and satisfying the needs of contemporaries. As well as surveying some of the more vibrant areas of the Church’s institutional life (looking, for instance, at school, college and almshouse foundation), the course will dwell on the laity’s response, particularly as expressed through the parish. This will provide the opportunity to delve into areas such as popular belief and practice, parish government, and more informal activity in the foundation and management of lay confraternities. It will also afford the opportunity to consider material culture, as produced by a remarkable programme of church rebuilding, and exhibited in the generosity that contemporaries devoted both to equipping and beautifying their churches. To the extent that the laity took the initiative in managing and adapting their religious environment, this course will examine the provenance of their ideas, and the means by which they exercised their collective will in local communities.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words (100%)

Apocalypse Now: Crisis, Change and Later Medieval Mentalities

Dr Eyal Poleg

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6714 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

This course is an investigation into the Book of Revelation in the Middle Ages. We will follow the concept of apocalypticism and Millennialism (that is, expecting the imminent end of the world) through a wide array of sources, from paintings and engravings to tree trunks and archaeological sites. Suspecting that apocalyptic thinking might be based on objective reality, we will encounter the unfavourable events of the fourteenth century (famines, climate change and the Black Death) asking how were they understood by contemporaries. We will then ask what was one to do when the world was coming to an end, and find answers in piety, imagery and radical movements. The course will end with a glance at the afterlife of the Apocalypse from the waning of the Middle Ages to post-modern American apocalypticism.

Renaissance Rome 1430-1530

Kate Lowe

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm (from 28 September 2015)

QMUL: HST6202

The course will examine the history and culture of both the city of Rome and the papal court during one of Rome’s most creative, innovative and pleasure-seeking periods, the hundred years between 1430 and 1530. Site of the monuments and antiquities of classical Rome and seat of the Catholic Church, Rome’s twin foci and their complex interrelationships were apparent everywhere in documentary, textual and visual renditions of the life of the city. Renaissance Rome’s heady mix of continuously shifting populations, free social mores, and extraordinary promotion of intellectual and artistic life through patronage, led to a constant juxtaposition of prelates and prostitutes, foreigners and Romans, humanists and artists, played out against the backdrop of the city grandly known as ‘caput mundi’, the head or centre of the world. The set texts include a pope’s and a goldsmith’s autobiographies, a historical account of the reign of the Borgia pope by his Master of Ceremonies, a Jewish account of a trip to Renaissance Rome, a sixteenth-century biography of Raphael, humanist treatises on curial life, anti-papal satire, a work of Renaissance pornography, and census returns.

Assessment is by two essays of 2,500-words each, one 3-hour examination, and a 10,000 dissertation.

The Causes and Consequences of the Fall of Constantinople (1453)

Jonathan Harris

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3145 and 3146

In the late fourteenth century, as the Ottoman Turks overran the Balkans, Constantinople, capital city of the shrunken Byzantine empire, held out behind its formidable defences. The first part of this course will look at the decline of the Byzantine empire during the hundred years leading up to 1453. Key events such as the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, the crusade of Nicopolis (1396), and the journey of Manuel II to the West (1399-1402) will all be considered in detail and, where possible, through contemporary sources. The second part will make a detailed examinaton of the many contemporary accounts of the epic siege of 1453 and consdier the strategic and military factors that enabled the Turks to succeed. Finally the long-term repercussions of the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II will be considered.

Assessment for the taught unit is by one three-hour examination (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,000-word essay.

Animals, Demons and the Boundaries of the Human in the Late Middle Ages

Sophie Page

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

UCL: HIST3204 and HIST9204

This course will explore the diverse inhabitants of the medieval universe, asking how ideas about animals and demons shaped the medieval understanding of what it meant to be human. We will investigate the concept of ‘nature’ in the Middle Ages and the boundaries of the supernatural and natural. Medieval theologians emphasised the differences between humans and animals, especially the superiority of human rationality and the belief that animals would not have an afterlife. Yet there was also an intellectual and aesthetic fascination with the blurring of human and animal boundaries. This was expressed in the flourishing of anthropomorphised animals and hybrid animal-humans in literature and art, from sympathetic werewolves to fierce manticores and the dog-headed Saint Christopher.

The study of the nature and powers of demons – demonology – developed in thirteenth century universities. As stories about the ways humans and spirits could be bound together through possession, invocation and pact became more credible and significant, fear of demons intensified and was expressed in increasingly gendered ways. The limits that late medieval theologians placed on the direct intervention of demons in the physical world contributed to a positive view of animals as part of God’s good Creation, but, conversely, the idea that demons could alter the appearances of things led to anxiety about the fluidity of the borders between animals, humans and demons. We will examine the development of concepts of animals and demons and how they influenced human emotions and behaviour, using diverse medieval sources such as theological treatises, romances, hunting manuals and accounts of witchcraft trials.

Assessment is by a three-hour written examination (100%) and a 10,000-word dissertation.

Lives, Letters and Lifestyles: English Political Society during the Wars of the Roses

Professor Virginia Davis

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6713 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

This course will provide students with an understanding of fifteenth century English history, introducing one of the major sources for the period, the substantial letter collection of the Paston family. Personal letters were extremely rare before the mid-fifteenth century and this is an exceptional collection which, alongside other smaller collections relating to other gentry and merchant families, are extensively used by historians to throw light on the political, social and economic history of England during a period of extensive social and political change.

The course will be assessed by primary source analysis (1,500 words), essay (2,500 words), oral presentation, a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Ivan the Terrible and the Russian Monarchy in the Sixteenth Century

Sergei Bogatyrev

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

SSEES, UCL: SEHI3006 and SEHI9006

The main aim of this course is to provide students with in-depth knowledge of the rule of Ivan IV the Terrible (1533-1584), one of the longest reigns in Russian history. Ivan the Terrible, the first Russian ruler who assumed the title of tsar, is known as one of the most controversial figures in Russian history. Historians, writers and artists portrayed Ivan as a Machiavellian statesman, a national democratic leader, a Renaissance-type writer, a bloody tyrant, a paranoid who saw enemies all around him. To put Ivan’s rule in a wider historical and cultural context, we will also examine the reigns of his immediate predecessors and successors, Vasilii III (1505-1533) and Fedor Ivanovich (1584-1598). The focus will be on the place of the monarch and his dynasty in the political regime of autocracy which formed in Russia in the sixteenth century. Care will also be taken to compare the development of the Russian monarchy with contemporary early modern European states. The set texts for the course include chronicles, legal codes, edicts, administrative records, polemical works, legal charters, household rules, proceedings of church councils, epistles, diplomatic papers, and foreign accounts. The sources utilised during the course will also include a large amount of visual material, like works of iconpainting, architecture, portraits, engravings, and films. Students will contribute presentations, and will write a short essay and document commentaries.

As the sources are all available in English translation, there are no language requirements for the course.

Assessment is coursework (25%), one three-hour examination (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

Life Writing: Memory and Identity in Twentieth Century Europe

Diana Georgescu

Available in 2016-17

tbc

SSEES, UCL: course code tbc

After decades of focusing on structures and broad processes in history and society, history has since the 1980s taken a turn to write the personal back into history. Familiarizing students with the “biographical turn” in history as well as in the social sciences and humanities more broadly, this course will explore the ways in which modern lives were experienced, remembered, and narrated in the turbulent 20th century. We will draw on a wide range of life narratives – whether biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, oral histories, diaries, or letters – to examine the possibilities and limits of the genre for writing the history of modern Europe, particularly its eastern margins. Rather than focusing on “important” people such as leaders or politicians, we will deal with ordinary men and women, whose lives did not unfold under conditions of their own making, but who nevertheless claimed agency in the process of living and writing history.

Many of the readings assigned for class discussion focus on Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia and/or are produced by actors from the region. The sources are clustered around some of the major historical developments of the twentieth century: the two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the Cold War division of Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. As a result, the readings provide insights into the twentieth century as a period of rapid political change and social displacement, which altered our notions of time and space and led to increasingly fragmented lives. They also raise broader theoretical questions that students are encouraged to further pursue in their dissertations. These include questions about the relation between identity and memory, memory-making and history-writing, remembering and forgetting, or about the epistemological and moral dilemmas of recovering “buried memories” or “silenced voices.” Because these questions have been at the center of not only historical, but also literary and anthropological research, our exploration of the twentieth century through the lens of ego-documents will be an interdisciplinary venture intended to train students as self-reflexive historians.

East and West through Travel Writing: the Limits and Divisions of Europe

Wendy Bracewell

Not available in 2017-18

SSEES, UCL: SEHI3001 and SEHI9001

This course explores the ways travellers have constructed ideas of Europe, concentrating on the seventeenth century to the present. A body of source material has been selected from the rich variety of travel writings and related genres which deal with ideas of European identity and alterity. In particular, the course includes the writings of those from Europe’s eastern margins, comparing and contrasting them to more familiar works by Western travellers.

The course aims to introduce students to a selection of travel writing and related genres; to encourage critical analysis of travel writing, focusing especially on the ways Europe (and particularly its eastern limits and divisions) has been perceived and represented; and to introduce students to a variety of methodological and theoretical tools for the study of travel writing. Because of the nature of the sources themselves, and because the issues of identity, difference, representation and power have been the subject of discussion in a number of disciplines, the course is conceived as interdisciplinary (bringing together historical, literary and anthropological perspectives).

There are no prerequisites or language requirements. It is assumed that students will have a general knowledge of modern European history, but also that their areas of expertise will vary (and this is taken into account in the course’s approach). Assessment is coursework (25%), one three-hour examination (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

Tudor England and the Italian Renaissance: Reactions and Comparisons

Peter Mack, Alessandro Scafi (Warburgh Institute)

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3320 and HIST9320

The Italian renaissance was a model of civilization for Tudor England and remains one to this day. What did Tudor English culture, which has been so much admired in later centuries, owe to its imitation of and opposition to Italian models? This course will focus on cultural history, history of ideas and the theory and practice of politics. After discussing the problem of defining the Italian renaissance and comparing the political structures of the Italian city states and the English nation-state, the first term will use a series of events and texts to explore the society, culture and politics of Medicean Florence, Papal Rome and Urbino (as the model of the ideal renaissance court). We shall read extracts from Castiglione, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Ficino and Vasari and we shall discuss paintings by Botticelli, Raphael and Michelangelo.

In the second term we shall consider the impact of renaissance ideas on English education and politics in the sixteenth century. We shall discuss Holbein’s drawings of Henry VIII’s court, portraits of Elizabeth and country houses built by her courtiers, and we shall read texts by Erasmus, More, Elyot, Jonson, Spenser and Shakespeare. The course will be taught in the interdisciplinary traditions of the Warburg Institute and students will have access to the Institute’s incomparable library holdings in renaissance culture and the afterlife of the classical tradition. Visits to the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum will form part of the course. If possible we shall also arrange a visit to some of the Elizabethan country houses to be discussed in term two.

Assessment is by a three-hour written examination and a 10,000-word essay.

The Origins of Reformation in England

TBC

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3007/6AAH3008

The course will examine this contentious and complex subject, and through the study of both religious ideas in the abstract, and their application in government, church and parish, will explore the intricate interweaving of religion and society. The course will study the origins of religious change in England from the late fifteenth century until the making of the Elizabethan Settlement. The customary division between the late medieval and early Reformation eras will be transcended by an array of sources dealing with religious belief and practice from c.1480 to c.1560. The more traditional sources for the origins of Reformation will thus be placed in the context of late medieval piety and some of the less well-known manifestations of religious change. The influence of Lollardy will be studied alongside that of medieval mysticism, and the first stirrings of Protestantism will be seen against the background of humanist developments, and viewed alongside the Catholic reform movement. Sources will range from published and manuscript sermons, letters and chronicles, polemical publications and devotional works, through official proclamations and parliamentary statutes, to the records of heresy trials and visitation returns. It is hoped that these sources will provide an understanding of the changing patterns of belief and worship, and also an insight into the social response to religious innovation.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper, which will include extracts from primary sources, and an essay of 10,000 words. Some acquaintance with early modern English history or with religious history would be an advantage.

Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries, c.1520-1620

Ben Kaplan

Available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3313 and HIST9313

The course examines the religious and political upheavals that rocked the Low Countries in the sixteenth century – the Reformation and the Revolt against Spain. It pays special attention to what was unique about the religious scene in the Low Countries: the protean character of the early Reformation there, the mass following that Anabaptism won, the influence of Erasmus, the unparalleled harshness of religious persecution, the ambitious ‘new bishoprics’ scheme for reforming the Catholic Church, the mass flight of Protestants into exile, the uncompromising selectivity of the Dutch Reformed churches, the ‘Libertine’ resistance to Calvinist discipline, the controversy over predestination, and the practice of toleration. The course also looks for patterns behind the complex course of political events: the attachment of Netherlanders to their ‘privileges’, their goals and justifications for rebellion, the swing vote cast by the so-called ‘middle groups’, the dilemmas posed by the question of sovereignty, and the functioning of the new republican polity that formed in the northern provinces.

No foreign languages are required, although students who have a relevant one will be encouraged to use it. While not essential, it would help to have some previous knowledge of early modern European history.

The course will be examined by a three-hour written paper which will include a compulsory question on gobbets, and by an essay of 10,000 words.

The Age of Religious Wars

Benjamin Kaplan

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3319 and HIST9319

This course examines three of the greatest conflicts of early modern Europe: the Revolt of the Netherlands, the Thirty Years War in Germany, and the French Wars of Religion. These were all very long, very complicated conflicts. In order to make the course material manageable, in any given year only two of the three conflicts will be treated in depth through course readings and discussions in the taught course (in 2013-14, the Dutch and German conflicts). Students will always be free, however, to write their dissertation on any one of the three conflicts. The course examines these conflicts comparatively. Its goal is to understand (a) the diverging historical trajectories of France, Germany, and the Netherlands in the early modern period, (b) the interweaving of their histories in a wider European context, and (c) the common structural issues behind the different conflicts. The course will pay particular attention to how Europe’s new religious divisions combined in explosive ways with efforts to change the distribution of political power.

The course will be examined by a three-hour written paper and by an essay of 10,000 words.

When Kings were Gods: Early Modern Islamic Political Ideas

Evrim Binbas

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3356 & HS3357

One of the unresolved conundrums of Islamic history has been the intellectual, religious, and ideological background of the formation of the early modern Islamic regional empires, i.e., the Ottomans in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Safavids in Iran, and the Timurid Mughals in India. Emerging from a common background shaped by the Islamic and Mongol political ideals in the Late Medieval period, each one of these empires formulated a different solution to the political and ideological problems that Middle Eastern Islamic polities had faced since 1258, when the Mongol armies effectively destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. This course traces the intellectual and religious lineages of the ideas of empire and discusses the different shapes that they took in the early modern period under the light of a wide range of original texts in English translation, including political, theological, and legal treatises as well as visual, numismatic, and epigraphic sources.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,000-word essay.

Women and Gender in Early Modern England

Laura Gowing

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3009/6AAH3010

This course examines the roles and relations of women and men in England, c.1550-1700. Against the backdrop of the print revolution, demographic and economic change, urbanisation, the Reformation, the Civil War, and the Restoration, it considers the enforcement of household order and changing definitions of family; the exclusion of women from politics and the roles they played in rioting, petitioning, the Civil War, and the radical sects of the 1650s; the gender politics of religious reformation, recusancy, martyrdom, and Puritanism; the ways that people understood sexual differences, the body, and reproduction; the power of insults, honour, and reputation; and the narratives of crime, violence and disorder. Using a wide range of sources, from sermons, legal treatises, and household advice to popular literature, diaries, letters, and legal testimonies, we will consider how women and men understood, enforced, and challenged gender roles. Some study of early modern England would be helpful.

Examination will be by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Death of a Dynasty: Tudors and Stuarts, c. 1590-1610

Professor Michael Questier

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6214

The Georgian period was an era of startling contrasts: elegance and squalor, politeness and prostitution, This module is an in-depth document-based exploration of the political culture of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England and Britain. It focuses first and foremost on the defining political event of the period, namely the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England and the resulting union of the two crowns. This was a deeply contested issue up to Elizabeth's death in March 1603 and, after James came south, contemporaries argued about what his accession signified politically. The disputes before and after 1603 spilled out into what historians now call the "public sphere" of contemporary politics and this allows us to follow what various different interest groups, court factions, ideologues, and, for want of better words, the general public, thought about the change of dynasty. Here we have a window onto a world of early modern politics like no other.

Assessment will be by a 10,000 word dissertation, dissertation progress report, two essays, and a source analysis.

The British Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1627-60

Jason Peacey

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3312 and HIST9312

The decades of the British civil wars and interregnum continue to exert a profound grip on the popular imagination, as well as a powerful influence over at least some aspects of contemporary politics, and this course will explore what is unquestionably one of the most exciting, complex and contentious periods in our history, and which boasts some of its most controversial and charismatic individuals, from Charles I and Cromwell to John Milton and John Lilburne. It will explore how and why Britain experienced civil war during the 1640s, and the political and religious ramifications during the late 1640s and 1650s, when Britain witnessed a republic, a written constitution, and the emergence of a ‘fiscal-military state’ and a major world power. Students will trace the political and religious changes in Britain during the mid-seventeenth century; engage with political, constitutional, and religious ideas, both mainstream and radical; examine elite and popular politics, both nationally and locally; explore issues and factors determining political consciousness, motivation and allegiance across the social and political spectrum; trace the emergence of new institutional structures and media; and assess the period’s historical significance and influence. Central to this course will be examination and analysis of a variety of original source material, in terms of official documents, diaries, private letters, and memoirs, as well as early newspapers and political tracts, not least in order to engage with some of the most important historiographical debates of the last half a century, as well as recent trends in research and scholarship.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Radicalism in the English Revolution

Ariel Hessayon

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

GC: HT53210A/B

This course examines arguably the most turbulent period in all English history: 1641–1660. These years were marked by rebellion in Ireland; bloody Civil Wars in Britain; political, religious and social radicalism; regicide; eleven years of republican rule; and the de facto restoration of the monarchy. One would think that by now there is nothing new for historians to learn about the English Revolution, that all the important issues have been resolved. Yet the opposite is true, for there remains a lack of consensus as to the causes of events, the manner in which some of them occurred and their significance. Even the name is in dispute.

Moreover, whereas class and ideological conflict once seemed a plausible explanatory tool, it has been a major achievement of the so-called revisionist interpretation of early modern England to shift the emphasis away from tension towards consensus and contingency. One outcome of this approach has been the attempted marginalisation of radicalism during the English Revolution. Thus prominent figures within what might be termed the canonical English radical tradition (itself largely a twentieth-century historical construction) have been regarded as unrepresentative of the conforming, traditionalist, uncommitted majority; their extreme opinions apparently advocated for only a brief period of their lives; their influence upon society supposedly exaggerated both by panicked political elites and skilled propagandists preying on fears of property damage or cautioning against introducing religious toleration and its corollary, moral dissolution (abhorrent beliefs begat aberrant behaviour). Similarly, conventional forms of popular protest such as food, enclosure and tax riots were reduced in scale and scope and drained of radical ideological content. Instead these incidents were presented as sporadic, uncoordinated, locally specific, largely bloodless and sometimes richly symbolic examples of conservative disorder. Whatever your opinion, you will get ample opportunity to formulate your arguments, thus adding your own distinctive contribution to these on-going debates.

Assessment will be by one two-hour examination (55%), one 2,500-3,000 word essay (35%), one 500-750 word gobbet (10%), and a 10,000 word dissertation (100%)

Blasphemy, Irreligion and the English Enlightenment, 1650-1720

Justin Champion

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/HS3134 and 3135

This course will examine the intellectual and political consequences of the radical ferment (both popular and philosophical) of ideas spawned in the English Revolution of the 1650s. The course texts will include clandestine manuscripts, like the subversive 'Treatise of Three Impostors' which argued that Moses, Mahomet and Christ were all religious frauds, and printed works by critics like James Harrington, Thomas Hobbes and Charles Blount. The primary objective will be to study the anticlerical, heterodox and openly irreligious components of the Republican attack upon established Christianity. The second line of inquiry will explore how the attack on Christianity of the 1650s developed into a systematic rejection of all revealed religion in the later seventeenth century. Attention will focus upon arguments that set out to destroy the authority of the priesthood and to reject the authenticity of the Bible, as well as their accounts of 'other religions' like Islam and Judaism which were used to criticise Christianity.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words (100%).

The Enlightenment (I) and (II)

Professor Richard Bourke

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6401

This module is concerned with the history of Enlightenment debates in moral and political philosophy. It will address the extent to which advances in human knowledge were supposed by thinkers in the period (c. 1640-1789) to improve the welfare of societies. It will therefore examine how the major figures of the Enlightenment explored the relationship between philosophy and public life from the middle of the seventeenth century to the French Revolution. To this end, the module will consider in detail a range of themes such as the nature of virtue, toleration, scepticism, justice, knowledge, the passions, superstition, science, the state, constitutionalism, fanaticism. The module looks at the ambition to establish a science of politics as central the project of the Enlightenment. By studying closely rival theories of the relationship between moral and political systems, students will gain a broad familiarity with a significant range of key Enlightenment themes and major Enlightenment thinkers. The module will promote both a contextual understanding of the history of ideas and the close analysis of selected texts. Figures studied on the module include Thomas Hobbes, Giambattista Vico, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Students will emerge from the module having been exposed to a wide range of authors, and having immersed themselves in the detailed study of key canonical documents of the Enlightenment.

The course will be assessed by an essay (5,000 words), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Knowledge, Power and the State in Britain, 1660-1801

Julian Hoppit

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3315 and HIST9315

From the late seventeenth century, Britain’s international standing improved dramatically, especially because its central government found new ways of encouraging and exploiting resources. Central to this were attempts to comprehend Britain’s potential accurately and imagine new ways of realising them. There was an explosion of information gathering, quantitative imaginings, and policy proposals. Such optimism was far from always fulfilled, not least because of the very different demands of intense warfare waged almost continuously from 1689-1713, but the results were nonetheless profoundly transformative. After then, ambitions were reconstituted, especially from the middle of the eighteenth century under the twin challenges of much expanded empire and the early industrial revolution. But there were also important developments in the gathering and deployment of information. The institution of the first census in 1801 marked the culmination of such developments, as well as the dawning of a new statistical age. The focus of the course is therefore upon how information was imagined and gathered and its uses, practical and rhetorical by opinion formers and policy makers.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

A man’s house is his castle, for safety and repose to himself and his family.’ This module unlocks the front door of the Englishman’s castle, to peer into the privacies of life at home from c. 1660-1830. It will vividly recreate the texture of life at home, from bed bugs and insects breeding behind the wallpapers, to new goods, fashions and rituals, from the performances of the drawing room to the secrets of the dressing room. Domestic life is coming out of the closet.

Assessment will be by a 10,000 word dissertation, 3 hour unseen exam, an essay, object study and seminar presentation.

The Enlightenment

Dr Niall O'Flaherty

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 14:00-16:00

King's: 6AAH3027/6AAH3028

The eighteenth century in Europe was a period of bold intellectual experimentation in which some of society’s most cherished social, political and religious ideas were challenged. The transformation of intellectual culture which ensued was partly the result of a revolution in scientific method, but attempts by prominent thinkers in the period to place the study of man on these newly-laid natural philosophical foundations were equally important. The core aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the debates arising from this enterprise in their historical and intellectual contexts, with particular emphasis being placed on the social, political and religious dimensions of such controversies. The module will feature themes such as the sceptical assault on religion, ‘rational Christianity’, the science of politics, attitudes to Commercial society, the American and French Revolutions and the impact of contact with non-European civilisations on European thought. Students will become familiar with a number of key interventions in debates on these issues through a detailed study of primary texts. The course treats the Enlightenment as a European-wide phenomenon, and therefore includes works by thinkers from across the continent, including David Hume, John Locke, Voltaire, Vico, Rousseau, Kant and Bernard Mandeville. As well as engaging in detailed historical analysis of Enlightenment texts, the course will explore historiographical debates about whether the diversity of preoccupations of eighteenth-century men of letters and the variety of historical contexts in which they wrote means it is no longer possible to talk meaningfully about the Enlightenment, but only about Enlightenments. Such reflections will give an impetus to comparative study.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Voice, Citizenship and Identity in Western Science, Politics and Culture, c.1750-c.1914

Dr Anna Maerker

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 14:00-16:00

King's: 6AAH3047/6AAH3048

Voice is a multifaceted phenomenon which raises a wide range of issues. Finding one’s voice, and "making one's voice heard" are considered signs of individuality and emancipation. However, voice has also been associated with power: the voice of authority. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, voice became an object of study for a range of new disciplines and individuals. Historical actors interested in voice came from a variety of backgrounds. The politics and the science of voice were closely linked, and the new engagement with voice provided links between diverse communities of public speakers both religious and secular, political reformers and agitators, anatomists, physicians and physiologists, professional singers and voice teachers as well as showmen and inventors.The course is intended to focus on the intersections of politics, culture, science and medicine, and on issues of citizenship, identity and public participation which are associated with voice from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

Themes will include: the history of elocution and its links to political activism; the history of large workers' choirs in France and the UK and their envisioned role for social improvement; attempts to mechanise the human voice, e.g. by King's physicist and inventor Charles Wheatstone; nineteenth-century debates about the difference between humans and animals; debates about women speaking in public, from Queen Victoria to political activists and preachers; and voice as public entertainment: voice machines and vocal "freaks" such as ventriloquists.

Sources will include elocution manuals, public speeches, eyewitness accounts and newspaper articles, medical publications on the voice, historical medical/scientific instruments and automata, songs written for workers' choirs, advertising material.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination and one 10,000-word dissertation.

Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1760-1776 (1)

Stephen Conway

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3301 and HIST9301

This course examines the conflict of attitudes, interests, and policies between Great Britain and the British North American Colonies, from its emergence during the last stages of the Seven Years War up until the American Declaration of Independence.

Teaching is closely orientated to consideration of the set texts. These texts have been chosen to illustrate the Anglo-American confrontation. From the British side, they depict the instruments of colonial rule, the formulation of new policies and the great debate stimulated by American disaffection. From the American side they enable the student to study how grievances were articulated and claims to a new status were defined.

Examination is by a three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

The American Revolution and the Creation of the United States, 1760-1815

Angel-Luke O'Donnell

Available in 2016-17

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3039 and 6AAH3040

The United States proclaimed itself an independent nation on July 4, 1776. The causes and consequences of the American Revolution have always been a core concern in American historiography. Although the subsequent growth in the power and status of the United States has sometimes been taken as an indication that independent nationhood was inevitable, this was hardly the case. The decision to declare independence evolved gradually and the step was not taken lightly. Nor was it an easy decision to realize. It required a long and costly war against the mother country, broadening to an international war that drew in Britain’s traditional enemies France and Spain, to secure independence.

The Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the war and granted the American colonies independence on generous terms. Nevertheless, the ensuing thirty years were arguably the most critical in the nation’s history. This period saw the radical overhaul of the federal union by the adoption of the federal Constitution of 1787, creating a stronger national government that could begin to address the many challenges facing the young nation.

Within merely a few years after the adoption of the Constitution, the Wars of the French Revolution ushered in a situation of international war and fierce international competition that would last to 1815. Under almost constant pressure the American union faced threats of disintegration and war yet managed not only to survive but to emerge strengthened from repeated ordeals. When a new world order was established as a result of the defeat of Napoleonic France there was no longer any doubt that the United States would endure. In the course of the ensuing century the American republic would develop into the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

Examination is by a three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

The experience of power in Nigeria since 1900

Vincent Hiribarren

Available in 2016-17

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3043 and 6AAH3044

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous state – home to one in every six people living on the African continent. In 2050, Nigeria should even be the fourth largest country on the planet according to the United Nations. Historically, the country has also been viewed as the classic example of Africa’s failure to perform to its potential. Nigeria has the strongest economy of the continent and should be one of the richest countries in Africa – most Nigerians are in fact desperately poor. In this module, students will analyse the experience of power in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. They will assess the history of ethnic and religious strife (for example Boko Haram) and will understand concepts such as corruption, military coups, poor governance or failed state. At the end of this module, students will be able to analyse the significance of these themes in Nigeria but will also be able to demonstrate critical knowledge of these themes across Africa.

Examination is by a three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Monarchs and the Enlightenment in Russia and Central Europe

Simon Dixon/Richard Butterwick

Not available in 2017-18

SSEES, UCL: SEHI3009 and SEHI9009

'The Enlightenment' in France is most often associated with the philosophes - notably Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, and Rousseau - who were, more often than not, highly critical of the French monarchy and sometimes persecuted by the French state. Rightly or wrongly, they were subsequently blamed for undermining the Ancien Regime. In Central Europe and Russia, however, 'Enlightenment' was usually promoted by monarchs in order to strengthen their states. In articulating 'enlightened' statements of intent and implementing 'enlightened' policies, they were cheered on by the same philosophes who often criticized the monarchy in France. Indeed, Voltaire and Diderot even came to the provocative conclusion that under the rule of wise and 'enlightened' monarchs, the 'light' of reason and toleration now shone from 'the North'. This course opens with a study of the eighteenth century's most influential work of political and social thought, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. It will then examine the impact of the ideas and language of 'the Enlightenment' in the Russian Empire, the Prussian Monarchy, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reigns of Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa and Joseph II, and Stanislaw August Poniatowski. It will also analyse those monarchs' ambiguous relationship with the philosophes and consider the applicability of the terms 'enlightened absolutism' and 'enlightened despotism' in the specific social and religious contexts of those territories.

Assessment is coursework (25%), one three-hour examination (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

Antipodean Encounters: Aborigines, Convicts and Settlers in New South Wales, c.1770-1850

Margot Finn

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3318 and HIST9318

This course explores the encounters between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples in colonial New South Wales, c. 1770-1850. It emphasises the significant differences both within and between European and Aboriginal populations, and the ways in which processes of colonisation both consolidated and eroded these differences. Substantial emphasis is placed upon the ways in which Enlightenment thought helped to frame the colonial encounter: Enlightenment conceptions of human nature, science, economy and civilisation are all examined in this context. The impact of legal structures also receives substantial attention: the conviction of criminals in Britain, their transportation to Australia and the operation of the criminal law in New South Wales all shaped the structure, function and perception of colonial Antipodean society. The emergence of a society of ‘free’ settlers and labourers from these convict origins provides an additional topic of focus for the module. Throughout the course, attention will be paid to historiographical debates within Australian history.

The course will be examined by a three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

The Making of a Colonial Regime: Eastern India, 1780-1820

Jon Wilson

Not available in 2017-18

King's: 6AAH3013/6AAH3014

What is colonialism? This course asks that question by examining British government in India during the period in which the East India Company began to consolidate its authority there. The course concentrates on the province of Bengal. Students will study British debates about the nature of Indian society and how they should govern it. By examining the way the East India Company raised revenue, administered justice and governed religion, they will also examine the changing relationship between Britons and Indians in practice. Students will gain a sense of the changing shape of the East India Company's regime in Bengal, and how Indians responded to British rule. There are no language requirements.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper, which will include questions from primary sources, and an essay of 10,000 words.

The French Revolution

Colin Jones

Not available in 2017-18

QMUL: 13/

The course provides an in-depth examination of one of the most formative events in world history. The Revolution will be analysed in its origins, processes and outcomes, in the context of European and Atlantic history as well as of the French past. The political narrative of events from 1787 to 1799 will form the organizing thread of themodule, but social, economic, intellectual, religious, ideological and cultural aspects of the period will also feature. A particular focus will be on how and why the Revolution drifted towards Terror – and how Terror was ended. A short, optional research trip to Paris will allow students to explore key Revolutionary sites.

There are no prerequisites for the course. Students with a working knowledge of French are welcome, but equally those with none.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination, including an element of documentary analysis through gobbets, and an essay of 10,000 words.

The Revolting French: British and French Responses to Revolutions

Pamela M. Pilbeam

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/HS3255 and 3256

The course compares contemporary British and French responses to the revolutionary upheavals in France from Napoleon’s Hundred Days to the Paris Commune, 1871, via the July revolution, the Lyon silkworkers’ rebellions in the 1830s, the events of 1848 and Louis Napoleon’s coup in 1851. We shall look at ambassadors’ comments, British newspapers, illustrated papers, cartoons and waxworks and a range of French views, lithographs, cartoons and songs. Everything is in English, except the songs – but they have good tunes!

Assessment for the taught unit is by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words.

The Age of Revolutions: Global Perspectives

Dr Maurizio Isabella

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6363

The course examines the global nature of the age of revolutions between the late eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century, focusing in particular on those parts of the world and on those revolutionary events traditionally treated by historians as marginal or peripheral. It provides an overview of the period through a set of case studies, ranging from events in Latin and Central America to the Mediterranean and Asia, as well as through the analysis of their global political and ideological entanglements. The course is organized around a variety of approaches. First it provides an introduction to the methodology of global history and its implications for the study of the age of revolutions. Second, it offers a thematic and comparative analysis of the shared features of the revolutions around the world (the role of the army and nature of revolutionary wars, the relationship between religion and revolutionary ideologies, counter-revolutionary culture, secret societies). Finally, it discusses specific case studies (the Haitian revolution,the Greek revolution of 1821, etc) and explores connections and transnational influences across the world.

The course will be assessed by two gobbet analyses (1,500 words each), two essays (3,500 words each) and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

The Age of Emancipation: Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1763-1896

Dr Erik Mathisen

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HIST6351

At the end of the eighteenth century, one of the most profitable and most brutal economies in world history began to crumble. In an unparalleled period of international upheaval–spurred by high-minded ideals, hard-headed politics and violent revolutions–abolitionists and Africans, old empires and new nations, began a process that would free millions from slavery, and bring an entire political and economic system crashing to the ground. This module invites students to examine why slave systems all over the Atlantic World began to topple, and what kind of world order emerged from the often violent chaos. By studying the history of emancipation–from the United States to the Caribbean and beyond–students can learn more about a moment in time that shaped the modern world.

The course will be assessed by gobbet analysis (1,500 words), literature review (3,500 words), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

'The Pursuit of Happiness?' The Creation of American Capitalism, 1763-1914.

Jo Cohen

Available in 2018-19

QMUL: HST6739 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

America in the nineteenth century was the quintessential boom and bust nation. If you weren't getting ahead then you were "going to smash." This module examines the creation of this restless society, going beyond economics to explore the culture of American capitalism in its transformative years. Beginning with slavery and the trade of empire, we will go on to explore the expansion of capitalism through a series of urban case studies in New York, Chicago, New Orleans and beyond. Together we will examine how American culture became intertwined with capitalism: examining the growth of individualism, the fear of failure, the shape of a Panic and the rise of risk-taking. We will finish with a look at how industrial capitalism in the US shaped the dreams and desires of a modern and powerful society. Using novels, pamphlets, advertisements, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, diaries, images and objects we will uncover the ways Americans constructed, experienced and challenged the culture of capitalism as it grew into its modern dimensions. .

We the People: Democracy in America, 1787-1861

Dr Daniel Peart

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6740 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

'We the People'. This famous phrase, the first three words of the United States Constitution, symbolises a political system founded on the principle that 'the People' must rule. But who are 'the People'? And what practical role should they play in government? These questions were not resolved by the founders of the United States, and as the Occupy and Tea Party movements demonstrate they are still far from settled today. This module will explore how the meaning of American democracy was transformed through a series of confrontations and compromises, beginning with the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and concluding with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, a conflict described by one historian as 'the greatest single failure of American democracy'.

The course will be assessed by gobbet analysis (2,500 words), literature review (2,500 words), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Racial Segregation and Apartheid c.1880-1990

Professor Saul Dubow

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST636364

South Africa's system of racial segregation and apartheid survived for a century. In no other modern society in the world was institutionalised, statutory racism, exhibited to anything like the same degree. Racial segregation was first introduced under British colonial rule from the late-19th century; its successor, apartheid, was instituted in 1948 by those who sought an even more systematic form of race-based society. Apartheid was reformed in many respects but remained fundamentally intact as a defence of white supremacy and was dismantled only in the 1980s. This course will examine the history of white supremacy in South Africa, as well as popular resistance to segregation and apartheid, in its many and diverse aspects: political, cultural, ideological and intellectual.

China and the World: Migrations and Frontiers, 1800-1950

Dr Weipin Tsai

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH (Egham): HS3365/HS3366

This course will examine the history of Chinese migrations, both internal and external, from the eighteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. The course will look at how Chinese human mobility responded to and reflected the changes in politics, economics, and culture during the period. In the eighteenth century there was a substantial wave of migration to Taiwan and south-east Asia, stimulated by policies pursued by the Qing Government. In the second half of the nineteenth century, large numbers of Chinese left their homes and worked as either seamen or labourers in the United States, Canada, Peru, Great Britain, and locations across the Pacific region. Internally, Chinese sojourners and permanent migrants moved between provinces. Along with their ambitions, they brought their home customs with them. In addition to the movements of regular migrants – primarily merchant and labourers – to major cities and wealthier provinces, it is also important to note several large-scale, collective migrations, such as the migrations to north-east China in the second half of the nineteenth century and to south-west China during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s and 40s. These internal migrations caused significant economic and demographic impacts across Chinese society, and their effects can be seen even today. The course will compare and contrast these migrations in their local and global dimensions, with the goal of enabling students to unpack the complex relationships between waves of Chinese migration and Chinese modernisation, as well as to explore China’s response to these challenges internally and externally. This course will also provide a historical understanding of the Chinese diaspora today.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by an oral presentation (10%) and a three-hour examination (90%), and for the coursework unit a dissertation of 10,000 words (100%)

Comparing Religious Fundamentalisms in the 19th and 20th centuries

Markus Daechsel

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH: HS3330/31

Ever since the Islamic Revolution in Iran happened to coincide with the greater prominence of Christian nationalist rhetoric in Ronald Reagan's White House journalists, policy makers and academics have suggested that the end of the 'short' twentieth century brought about a global return of religious radicalism. This fashion receded to the background for a while in the 1990s, but in the aftermath of 9/11 has returned with a vengeance, leading to the publication of an avalanche of books about what is 'wrong' with public religion the world over. This course will discuss the utility of 'fundamentalism' as an analytical category as it seeks to explain a wide range of radical political cultures around the globe under one master category: from the new wave of Islamic terrorism to settler intransigence in and religious Zionism in Israel, from communal violence in India committed under the banner of a muscular Hinduism to the neo-Imperialist agenda of the Christian Right in the US. We will investigate the complex pasts of these movements and religious tendencies, which take us back to the 19th century and beyond, and attempt to sketch an ideological landscape of 'fundamentalists' by analyzing their own writings and pronouncements. The overall approach of this course is thematic and comparative, using the findings of this cross-religious and cross-regional survey and debate them in a more general and conceptual framework.

NB – Not to be taken in conjunction with Group 2 HS2232 Lahore and Istanbul: modernity in the Muslim Imperial city, c.1850-1960.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by best two of four coursework essays (20%), an oral presentation (10%) and a three-hour exam (70%), and for the coursework unit an essay of 10,000 words (100%)

Caribbean Intellectual History, c.1800 to the Present

Richard Drayton

Available in 2017-18

King's: 6AAH3015/6AAH3016

The course surveys the intellectual history of the Caribbean from the beginning of creole revolts against colonialism to the contemporary period. It aims to introduce students to how the Caribbean has constituted itself from within through a body of sources in the principal languages of the region, using both written sources and popular oral sources in order to suggest how intellectual history may be constituted from below as well as above. It further examines the relationship of cultural life to power and politics, since all these intellectual interventions were generated in response to European and American imperialisms and their aftermaths.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Living the Empire: Metropole and Colony in the 1830s

Keith McClelland

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3309 and HIST9309

This course is focused on Britain and its empire. It investigates the relation between metropole and colony in the 1830s and the impact of empire on the making of Britons. Through an exploration of a series of key topics it focuses on the differentiated ways in which men and women both in the United Kingdom and across specific sites of empire, were constituted and constituted themselves as British subjects. Using different kinds of documents, from parliamentary debates and select committee reports to novels, sermons, essays, diaries and travel writing we shall investigate how identities were constructed both for Britons and their 'others'. In the process we shall be examining the making of class, gender and racial differences. The topics range from Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform to the abolition of slavery and the treatment of Aboriginal peoples, from women's relation to politics to the presence of the Irish in Britain.

The course will be examined by two essays (50%) and a three-hour written paper (50%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

Poverty, Dress and Identity in Nineteenth-Century England

Dr Vivienne Richmond

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

GC: HT53107C/HT53107D

For 'the poor', who formed the majority of the population in the long nineteenth century, clothing was a potent vehicle for the construction of individual and collective identities, a marker of success and failure, a determinant of 'respectability' and a key capital investment, yet expensive and difficult to obtain and retain. This course considers changing definitions of poverty and examines what the poor wore, what clothing meant to them, how it was 'read' by others and the many strategies employed to obtain it. We will read working-class autobiographies and diaries to understand how the acquisition, possession and display of clothing impacted on multiple facets of proletarian life. We shall also look at sermons and religious tracts, Parliamentary papers, instruction manuals, psychiatric texts, institutional records, magazines, prints, photographs and garments themselves, to examine the attitudes and policies of the many wealthier contemporaries who interested themselves in, and sometimes controlled, the dress of the poor. In so doing we shall discover that the study of popular clothing, fascinating in its own right, also opens a new window onto numerous aspects of nineteenth-century cultural and social history including the Poor Law, class relations, gender, regional variation, religion, philanthropy, education, consumption, retailing, work and leisure.

Assessment will be by: one two-hour examination (55%); one 2,500-3,000-word essay (35%); 500-750-word gobbet (10%); and one 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

Modernity and the Victorians: The Intellectual Response

Gregory Claeys

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH: 47/HS3251 and 3252

This course concerns the leading thinkers, and principal themes, of social and political thought in Victorian Britain, with an emphasis upon the development of liberalism and socialism and individualist and collectivist approaches to social and political problems. Examining in particular the question of extending the franchise, poor relief, and attitudes towards commerce and industry, culture and 'character', the course focuses on T. R. Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and John Hobson, with an excursion into Social Darwinism. Readings are from published primary sources, though an acquaintance with the relevant secondary literature is desirable. The lectures/seminars will, however, also discuss other texts by these writers and other authors. Other matters touched on, for example, include science and Social Darwinism, the development of political economy, secularism and the crisis of religious faith, and the general issue of 'Victorian values'. The teaching will be by weekly seminars.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words (100%).

Victorian Intellectual History

Georgios Varouxakis

Not available in 2017-18

QMUL:

The course offers an advanced understanding of the major issues, debates and controversies, currents of thought, thinkers and ‘public moralists’ in Victorian intellectual life. These will be closely connected with their broader political, social, economic, and cultural contexts. Themes and controversies focused upon include responses to the gradual advent of democracy, the ‘condition of England’ question, the role of political economy, socialism, the importance of evolutionary thinking, the reception and fate of Positivism in Britain, religious orthodoxy, nonconformity and unbelief, debates around biblical scholarship, the ‘Religion of Humanity’, the role of ‘culture’ and the search for new sources of authority, the meanings of ‘race’ and the significance attributed to it at the time, discourses of ‘national character’, and a wide range of debates on the meanings and merits of patriotism, cosmopolitanism, nationality, Empire and imperialism, and the divergent visions of global order and international relations advanced by Victorian public moralists.

Assessment is by one three-hour examination (50%) and two x 5,000 word research essays (50%).

The Empire in Victorian Britain, c.1830-1870

Zoe Laidlaw

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/HS3248 and 3249

This course examines the changing place of the Empire in British politics and society in the mid-nineteenth century. Between 1830 and 1870 the political relationship between Britain and the colonies was recast, while understandings of ‘race’ also changed profoundly. Drawing on a wide range of textual and visual sources – including official papers, cartoons, explorers’ diaries, newspapers, maps, parliamentary debates, novels and letters, students will examine British responses to imperial events such as the emancipation of slaves, indigenous rebellions in India and Jamaica; David Livingstone’s exploration of Africa; and the settlement of New Zealand. These will be placed alongside debates over emigration, prostitution, convicts, evolution and government which connected metropolitan and colonial societies. Students will be encouraged to address large themes such as the relationship between metropolitan and colonial societies, and changing definitions of 'Britishness'.

Assessment for the taught unit is by one three hour examination (70%), an oral presentation (10%) and two coursework essays (20%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,00-word dissertation.

Migration, Identity and Citizenship in Modern Britain

Humayun Ansari

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH: HS3346 & HS3347

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the role that migration has played in British life since the nineteenth century, with particular focus on the evolution of identities and notions of citizenship. It looks historically at the arrival, reception and impact of migrants – such as the Irish, Jewish and people from different parts of Britain’s global empire - in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before focusing on the experiences of those migrant groups that arrived after World War II and the various ways in which successive governments have sought to manage their presence in Britain. From immigration legislation, to race riots, from multiculturalism to Islamaphobia, this course engages with key aspects of modern British life and the various factors, historical as well as contemporary, that have shaped them.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,000-word essay.

Not available to students who have taken Group 2 course 'Ethnicity, Identity and Citizenship' (HS2254).

Abraham Lincoln and the Crisis of the Union, 1854-1865

Adam Smith

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3314 and HIST9314

The Civil War remains the defining event in American history. Over 600,000 combatants died in a war that ravaged the United States for four years and challenged the very survival of the nation. America’s greatest moral, political and constitutional crisis raises profound questions about the intersection of race, religion, nationalism and constitutionalism in the nineteenth century. The set texts include government documents, political speeches, polemical pamphlets, newspaper commentaries, private correspondence, sermons, cartoons and lithographs, songs, and selections from private diaries and journals.

Examination is by one three-hour written paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

This course may not be taken by students who have taken HIST2313 ‘The Crisis of the American Republic, 1857-1877’.

Urban, Culture and Modernity: Vienna-Prague-Budapest 1857-1938

Egbert Klautke

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

SSEES, UCL: SEHI3007 and 9007

This course will examine the history of major cities in the Habsburg monarchy and its successor states during the period of classical modernity. It will focus on the emergence of a particularly modern urban culture in Central Europe around the turn of the century. Taking turn-of-the-century Vienna as a starting point, the seminar will discuss the emergence of leading modernist movements and ideas in the ‘backward’ Habsburg empire. We will look at the particularly modern aspects of Vienna’s, Prague’s, and Budapest’s urban landscape and culture, and, where appropriate, compare these with developments in other cities in Central Europe that had specific relations with Vienna, Prague, or Budapest (e.g. Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Brno, Bratislava, Budweis, Zagreb). Students will study the development of capital cities as centres for the arts and popular culture, science and technology, industry and commerce; analyse their architectural and spatial development as well as the ideas that guided it; look at intellectual circles and networks of avantgarde artists, and study the different forms of nationalism within the cities. The course will make students familiar both with urban history and cultural and intellectual history. To this end, a wide range of sources will be used, from specialised academic literature to diaries, memoirs, and novels; from maps and photographs to reproductions of modernist art and architecture, to feature and documentary films. There is no language requirement.

Assessment is coursework (25%), one three-hour examination (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

Reconstruction, Land, and Labour in the United States, 1863-1887

Bruce E. Baker

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3294

The United States was transformed in the decades that followed the Civil War. Traditionally, the study of the processes by which this transformation occurred have been broken into separate topics: Reconstruction; industrialisation; westward expansion. This course treats these various aspects of the nation's history as integrally linked. Our focus will be to understand the processes by which control and allocation of resources of labour and land were contested by African Americans, Native Americans, industrial workers, and immigrants on the one hand and the business and political representatives of a maturing system of industrial capitalism on the other hand. Although centred on the political struggles of Reconstruction in the South, it analyses a wide variety of sources to illuminate connections between what was happening in the South and what was happening elsewhere in the country and to construct explanations that do not rely on notions of regional exceptionalism.

Assessment is by one three-hour written paper and a 10,000 word essay.

The "Heart of Darkness"? Identity, Power, and Politics in the Congo, c.1870-2010

Reuben Loffman

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6343

This course challenges conceptions of Central Africa as the "Heart of Darkness," a place disconnected from "civilization" and unintelligible to all save for the hardened anthropologist. It starts during the intensification of European encounters in the region from late nineteenth-century and ends by covering the most deadly conflicts since the Second World War. It engages with broad historical questions relating to ethnic formation, violence, international development, and the mission encounter. To reveal the complexities involved in power relations in the Congo, this module will make use of a vast array of different kinds of sources, such as literary accounts, photographs, and film.

The Lives of Oscar Wilde

Dr Thomas Dixon

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6316

In 1895, the celebrated playwright Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. This course uses Wilde’s life, career, and spectacular fall from grace to investigate the philosophy, literature, journalism, morality, and politics of the late nineteenth century. It asks how Wilde satirised Victorian society, and how the British establishment tried to comprehend Wilde within its moral, medical, and legal categories. It examines how Wilde became an icon of twentieth-century campaigns for gay rights, and how that process obscured other important aspects of Wilde’s life and thought, such as his Irish nationalism and his Christianity.

The course will be examined by one 2000-word essay, four biographies (500 words each), dissertation proposal (1000 words), dissertation (10,000 words) and a three-hour examination.

Modernity and Modernism

Axel Körner and Nicola Miller

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3310 and HIST9301

This course explores the philosophical, theoretical and historiographical debates surrounding the concepts of modernity and modernism, and the relationship between them, with specific reference to Europe and Latin America. The set texts are all written documents - philosophical essays, manifestos, letters, novels, plays and poetry - but during the course students will also discuss painting, music and architecture. Discussion will focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although some examples will be drawn from both earlier and later periods. Topics covered include modern philosophies of history (especially by Hegel and Marx); the role of Latin America in European constructions of modernity; modern concepts of aesthetics and knowledge; the modernist revolution in the arts, both in Europe and Latin America; the primitive and the modern; cultural expressions of modernity in Europe and Latin America.

Students should normally have taken a relevant course in European history and/or Latin American history. If you do not have this background please consult with the teachers before enrolling. A knowledge of one or more European languages would be an advantage, especially for the dissertation, but is not a requirement.

Teaching will be by weekly seminars. The course will be examined by two essays of 2,500-3,000 words each (25%) and a three-hour written paper (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

Berlin: A European Metropolis in the Twentieth Century

Rudolf Muhs

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH: HS3257 and 3258

Berlin was one of the focal points in the history of the 20th century. The notions associated with the German capital appear far from unequivocal, though. Across Europe and the world it served, and continues to serve, as a byword for both modernity and decadence; for civic pride and civil unrest, reactionary as well as progressive movements; for war and genocide; for tyranny, but also for freedom and, above all, for the unexpected turn of events. Based on a wide and diverse range of primary source material (from diplomatic documents and political discourses via journalistic, autobiographical and literary texts to cabaret songs and feature films), the course extends, chronologically, from the making of metropolitan Berlin before 1914 to the ramifications of reunification after 1990. Topics include, among others: Berlin society, its classes, milieus and communities; women across the decades and regimes; high culture and (ethnic, artistic, sexual and criminal) subcultures; the built environment from Wilhelmine grandeur, Republican sobriety, Nazi and Communist showcase architecture to post-war and post-wall reconstruction; the flowering of Jewish Berlin and its extinction; revolution, counter-revolution and the 'golden twenties'; political activism in the Weimar, Nazi and Communist eras; anti-fascist resistance, East Berlin dissent and West Berlin non-conformism; conquest, occupation and division; four-power-status, cold war and détente; the Wall and its fall; in short - everything from high politics to low life.

Assessment for the taught unit is by one three-hour examination (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,000 word dissertation.

This course may not be taken simultaneously with the Group 2 course 'Nationalism, Democracy and Minorities' (HS2264).

Progressivism and Progressive Thought in America, 1890-1914

Melvyn Stoke

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

UCL: HIST3405 and HIST9405

In the United States, progressivism was the long-running wave of reform that reached its crest just before the First World War. The movement generated great controversy and much new thinking on a range of subjects. Some of the most important issues of the time included: the role of government in social and economic affairs; the curtailment of irresponsible and anti-social practices by business corporations; muckraking journalism and the exposure of political corruption; urban reform; the conservation of natural resources; women's rights; the role of minority groups in American life, and issues relating to poverty, vice and crime. There were also recognizable 'progressive' attitudes towards foreign policy, education, religion, and sexual relationships. All these topics will be covered in the course, and it is hoped that students will choose particular areas of specialization which they may then develop for themselves in their long essays.

The course will be assessed by one three-hour examination (100%), and a 10,000-word essay (100%).

The Rise of US Imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1898-1933

Nicola Miller

Not available in 2017-18

UCL: HIST3304 and 9304

This course will analyse the rise of US influence in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1898 to 1933 using a variety of primary source materials, mostly US government documents but also letters and memoirs of US policy-makers. All the set documents are in English, but students with a reading knowledge of Spanish will be encouraged to investigate other primary sources. The course will devote the first few weeks to a discussion of competing theories of imperialism and post-colonialism. The subsequent detailed examination of US interventionism in Latin America will be directed towards evaluating the nature of US imperialism in the context of both theoretical and historiographical debates.

Students should normally have studied a US history and/or a Latin American history course. Students without this background should consult with Dr Miller before enrolling.

The examination will consist of one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Modern Leviathan: The State in the Twentieth Century

Dr Katrina Forrester

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6353

What is the state? Political thinkers throughout the ages have described the state in a variety of ways: as the result of a social contract, the seat of executive power, a corporation, or a metaphysical entity. In the twentieth century, the state seemed to be everywhere. Through modern systems of taxation, legislation and regulation, it governed, coerced and provided for people in new and unprecedented ways. How did these transformations shape how people understood the state? This module examines how American and European philosophers, lawyers, economists and journalists attempted to make sense of the state, its powers, and its roles in social and political life.

The course will be assessed by two essays (2,500 words each), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Red, White and Blues: Jazz and the United States in the Twentieth Century

Dr Daniel Matlin

Not available in 2017-18

KCL: 6AAH3028

Jazz offers a unique lens onto the history of the United States in the twentieth century. Beginning with the migrations and social formations which fostered the emergence of the music in the Caribbean port of New Orleans, this course views the development of jazz as a chronicle of America's social, political, cultural and intellectual history and of the nation's complex interactions with the wider world. Examining a wide range of sources including musical recordings, criticism, memoir, oral history, fiction, visual art and film, as well as a burgeoning scholarly literature, 'Red, White and Blues' explores successive transformations of the music, its performance and consumption and its cultural status. In doing so, it illuminates changes in the position of African Americans within American society, the significance of race within American culture, the relationship between 'popular' and 'art' music and the gender dynamics of American entertainment. It examines the emerging recognition of jazz as a national cultural treasure and its use as a 'sonic weapon' in American diplomacy, as well as the international spread of jazz as an example of American-led globalisation. Finally, it asks what kinds of identities and memories Americans have constructed through their narrating of the history of jazz.

Culture Wars. Religion and Politics, c. 1780-1880

Dr Michael Rowe

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

KCL: 6AAH3057/8

It is tempting to see the history of modern Europe as one of secularisation, with religion playing a diminishing public role. Explanations for this retreat include the intellectual impact of the Enlightenment, the political impact of the French Revolution, and the social consequences of industrial and commercial development. Recent historical research challenges this interpretation, even goingso far as to see the nineteenth century as constituting a 'second confessional age' (the first being the century following the Protestant Reformation). This module focuses on this second age, covering the century from 1780. This was a period when revolution not only allowed for greater democracy, but also raised awkward questions about citizenship, and whether, for example, religious minorities should have the right to vote. Technological and scientific development could be equally ambiguous: Darwin's theory of evolution might undermine Biblical interpretations; but the invention of the railway facilitated a very traditional expression of religiosity, namely the pilgrimage. These, and other examples drawn mainly from the European (including British) world, will encourage students to question whether 'modern' should necessarily mean 'secular'.

Assessment will be by one 3-hour examination (30 credits), one 10,000 word dissertation (30 credits)

British Economic History in the Age of the Great Depression

Professor David McLean

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

KCL: 6AAH3055/3056

Covering a much debated era in British economic history, this module is a study both of Britain's position in the world and of the problems which were emerging within its own agricultural and industrial sectors. The late nineteenth-century Great Depression features not only in modern academic controversy but, as is revealed from contemporary documents, was an issue widely debated within British commercial and political and circles. This course has a strong emphasis on farming,overseas trade and investment, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing industry. But alongside areas of the economy which were held to be in decline after c.1870 the course also investigates important aspects of economic expansion where innovation was taking place. There is also consideration of the growing tension between the forces of capital and labour and of the changing nature and condition of Britain's working population.

Assessment will be by one 3-hour examination (30 credits), one 10,000 word dissertation (30 credits)

Mass Culture in the Age of Revolution (Russian Revolution)

Philippa Hetherington

Available in 2017-18

SSEES, UCL: SEHI3008/9008

This course seeks to explore Russia's revolutionary era from the perspective of mass culture. It opens at the turn of the twentieth century, when Russia was experiencing a major industrialization drive that was accompanied by mass migration from the countryside, urbanization, and the emergence of mass political movements. At this time, the technologies and products of mass culture came into being, including mass entertainments, mass-circulation newspapers, and film. The course ends in 1934, when the political, social, and economic structures of the Soviet Union had been defined and victory declared in the struggle to build socialism. By this time as well, new forms of Soviet mass culture had emerged but these were deeply intertwined with the new institutions and mobilizational politics of the Soviet state.

Assessment is coursework (25%), one three-hour examination (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

The Making of Twentieth Century Britain

Professor David Edgerton

Available in 2016-17

King's: 6AAH3033/6AAH3034

This module takes a fresh look at the history of modern Britain by exploring its material life and associated ideas. It takes a post-declinist view of British history, and places Britain firmly in its rather special global context. It explores many topics from the nature of the elite to military and imperial practice; from the nature of factories to British ideas about the transformation of international relations through machines. The course will make use of a very wide range of primary sources, including parliamentary papers of many sorts, parliamentary debates, statistical sources, technical journals, the financial and economic press, memoirs, diaries, films (especially for productive processes) and photographs (including aerial), biographical sources for prosopographical work, and the occasional object.

Twentieth-Century Medicine, State and Society in the United States and United Kingdom

Caitjan Gainty

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3037/38

This module will explore the 20th century history - including the meaning, organization, practices, and significance - of medicine, its practices, its politics, its cultural status in the US and UK. It will examine the role of influential individuals, organizations, and other political actors in the construction of health care systems in each of the two nations in particular; it will also look to other factors in order to help explore this history: including the nature and meaning of citizenship, of war, of health, of statehood, of public and private, of individuality and responsibility, of rights, and of choice as these were manifested variously in the US and UK. Other key themes will be the century-long transition to “scientific” medicine, the perpetual and still ongoing indecision about what (and how and why) constitutes good health and effective medical practice, the significance of the relationship among doctor, patient and state, and the status of alternative practice as it developed alongside and often in tension with the standard medical establishment as we know it today. Students will be asked to consider the differences and similarities between medicine’s twentieth-century history primarily by looking at primary sources (and will thus need to consider both form – film, text, tv, radio, image – and content in their readings of these sources), they will also be encouraged to explore and synthesize the impact of these sources on late-century and early-21st century questions, about the status of medical care as a universal human right, about definitions of good health in an increasingly mobile and connected global population, and about the arguable disintegration of the state as the appropriate actor in the determination of where, when, how and why medicine is produced, practiced and theorized.

Assessment will be by one three-hour examination (50%) and one 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

Life in the Trenches: Perspectives on British Military History, 1914-18

Professor Richard Grayson

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

GC: HT53120A/B

Memories of the First World War remain strong, more than a century after the war’s start, through the influence of popular culture. Images of slaughter, mud and poor leadership dominate a public view which thinks of the lucky few who came back, even though fatality rates were around 12% of those who served. This module is focused on the day-to-day experiences of soldiers in the British army and the ways in which they have informed both ideas in academic debates and also popular memory of the war. Battalion war diaries are the core sources, recording the detailed movements of battalions once they had finished training. They provide both much detail and often, vivid description with the main focus being on four Irish battalions (2nd and 9th Royal Irish Rifles, 6th Connaughts and 7th Leinsters) which are central to the module convenor’s book Belfast Boys. These diaries will be used as one way of judging the accuracy of popular memory of 1914-18, which is so deeply rooted in popular culture. However, a wide range of other sources is used including historical artefacts, poetry, film and individual diaries. Students have much choice over their dissertation topic which can cover any aspect of the UK’s engagement with the war. A visit to the National Archive at Kew will be arranged to support research, while there is strong academic support and encouragement for research in other archives.

Assessment will be by: one two-hour examination (55%); one 2,500-3,000-word essay (35%); 500-750-word gobbet (10%); and one 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

The Russian Revolution

Lecturer to be confirmed

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

SSEES, UCL: SEHI3005 and SEHI9005

The Russian Revolution was a pivotal event in the history of the twentieth century. It ushered in an era of ideological conflict culminating in the Cold War and provided a model for liberation movements from China to Cuba. Consequently, the Revolution remained an especially politicised historical event. The years of perestroika and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 finally transformed the Russian Revolution into an historical fact: one could say that the Revolution itself had come to an abrupt and uncertain end. These events combined with the recent opening of archives in the former Soviet Union have energised debates among historians, and a re-evaluation of the Russian Revolution is currently occurring. This course allows students to study the political, social, and cultural processes of the Russian Revolution from 1917 through the rise of Stalin in the early 1930s.

There are no prerequisites for this course, but students are strongly encouraged to take 'History of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union since 1856' as preparation. The course will be conducted in weekly seminars, and students will be expected to contribute oral presentations.

Assessment is coursework (25%), one three-hour examination (75%), and an essay of 10,000 words.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-21 (I) and (II)

Dr Jon Smele

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6731 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

This special subject, is concerned with what were, arguably, the key events of the twentieth century: the collapse of the Russian Empire and the formation of the USSR. From the rise to power during these struggles of the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party across much of what had been the tsar’s realms stemmed – directly or indirectly – many of the most significant features of the subsequent era: the post-First World War peace settlement, the rise of fascism, the Second World War, the Cold War, the revolution in China, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the wave of student radicalism (“Lennonism”?) of the 1960s, and so much more. In the first semester, this module analyses the roles of political leaders, parties and social groups in the series of crises in Russia between the February and October Revolutions of 1917. In the second semester, attention turns to the civil war, assessing the impact of the battles against foreign intervention and domestic counter-revolution upon Bolshevik economic, foreign and state-building policies, the nature and failure of the anti-Bolshevik regimes in Siberia and South Russia, and the processes of the civil war in the non-Russian regions of the former empire. The course is based upon group analysis of a range of primary sources during weekly seminars. Knowledge of Russian is not required.

The course will be assessed by a 3-hour examination, two essays (2,000 words each), four gobbet analyses (1,000 words total) and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Moving the World: the Automobile as the Fetish of the 20th Century

Professor Bernhard Rieger

Available in 2016-17

Mondays, 2-4 pm

UCL: HIST3419 and HIST9419

The automobile has left a deep imprint on the globe and transformed everyday life in myriad ways. Promising personal liberty and signalling social status, cars have exerted the almost magical appeal of much-revered fetishes. Demand for automobiles has proven virtually boundless. It has not only given rise to novel marketing approaches but helped reshape modes of manufacturing whose management practices have transformed the working lives of millions far beyond auto plants. This fascination for automobiles has come at a high price. Satisfying humankind's desire for the automobile has taken a considerable environmental toll. It is not only that 40 per cent of the world's oil production currently ends up in petrol tanks; the proliferation of hundreds of millions of cars has required creating extensive, tightly regulated road networks that have transformed urban and rural environments as well as the conduct of quotidian affairs.

Next to a home, the automobile is for many individuals and families the second the most expensive consumer item, which countless owners, remarkably, simply leave in the street over night. Nothing, however, illustrates the automobile's magnetic draw better than the (temporary and not always flattering) character transformations that drivers undergo when they get behind the wheel. Indeed, in many cultures learning to drive has become synonymous with becoming a grown-up and hence a full member of society.

After a chronological overview and an introduction into the study of commodities, the course addresses the key themes described above. For a first-hand impression of an auto factory, we will also tour the Mini factory in Oxford. The course offers opportunities for a broad range of dissertations both geographically and thematically.

This course will be assessed by a three hour examination and a 10,000 word dissertation.

Competitive Men: The Politics of Competition in Ancient Greece

Dr Paola Ceccarelli

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

UCL: HIST3110 and HIST9110

The course focuses on competition (understood in a broad sense) within the ancient Greek world. Ever since the seminal work of Jacob Burckhardt (first published posthumously 1898), ancient Greece has been considered as a particularly competitive society. Competition traverses it at all levels, areas, and chronological periods: from the Iliadic injunction ‘to be bravest and pre-eminent above all’ (6.208; 11.784) to the competitive drinking and the poetic challenges of the symposion, from athletic competitions (the Olympic Games!) to dances and female beauty contests, from success in the lawcourts to conspicuous display of inherited wealth, relationships were dominated by an intense rivalry, that applied also at the level of international relations. And yet, this competitiveness could be harnessed, in specific situations, so as to consolidate the social fabric. On the basis of an ample selection of texts covering various genres (epic, lyric, comedy and tragedy, historiography, oratory, and documentary texts such as inscriptions) we shall examine the forms competition took, how widespread it was (was it a feature of elites, or did also the poorer citizen participate in this ‘culture of competition’? Is it really a defining feature of the Greek world?), the ways in which it was regulated, and how the polis could turn this to an advantage for the collective.

This course will be assessed by a three hour examination and a 10,000 word dissertation.

Soul and Body in Renaissance Thought

Dr Angus Gowland

Available in 2016-17

Mondays, 2-4 pm

UCL: HIST3321 and HIST9321

This course explores theories of human nature in the European Renaissance—an era when traditional teachings were revised and displaced by newly revived classical ideas, contested by philosophers, doctors and theologians amidst religious and political controversies, and, eventually, rejected in favour of radically scientific doctrines. Its main focus is on the rich corpus of philosophical, religious, and medical works composed between the late-fourteenth and the early seventeenth centuries—by famous authors such as Francesco Petrarch, Marsilio Ficino, Niccolò Machiavelli, Andreas Vesalius, Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, as well as such less well known figures as Johann Weyer, Jacques Ferrand, and John Abernethy. Students are also encouraged to delve into the abundant literary and artistic sources (such as Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I and Michelangelo's Sogno) that illustrated and contributed to views of what it was to be human in this period.

The main territories covered include the physiology of the body and soul in medicine and natural philosophy; the ethical and spiritual aspects of the soul and its passions in moral and religious works, before and after the Reformations; the incorporation and refinement of conceptions of human nature in works of social and political thought; and the expansion of geographical and ethnological knowledge resulting from missionary enterprises and the colonisation of the ‘new world’. Within these areas, particular attention is given to debates about the dignity or misery of man and the immortality of the soul, theories of sexual difference, theories of melancholia and dreaming, the status of the occult sciences of astrology and demonology, discussions of the geographical relativity of customs and values, ideas about 'civility' and civilisation, and, most broadly, historiographical claims about the secularisation of knowledge and the growth of modern individualism. Emphasis throughout is on the close reading of primary texts, but always in relation to the contemporary political, religious and social contexts that informed them.

This course will be assessed by a three hour examination and a 10,000 word dissertation.

Australia in the Second World War: Strategy, Politics and Diplomacy

Carl Bridge

Available in 2016-17

Mondays, 2-4 pm

King's: 6AAH3019/6AAH3020

This course examines the evolution of Australian strategy, politics and diplomacy during the Second World War. It focuses on the high politics of critical episodes and campaigns, exploring how politicians, diplomats and military commanders coped, or failed to cope, in the planning for war and in its execution, and in the peace-making which followed. Particular attention is paid to the making of a grand strategy and to alliance management, to the ups and downs of relationships with major allies - the British and Americans - and minor ones - such as the New Zealanders and Dutch. The much-vaunted Anzac tradition is scrutinised and evaluated. Older imperial and more recent radical nationalist and revisionist historiographies are compared and assessed against the documentary record. We also take a critical look at the attempts by the authors of war memoirs to shape historical reputations.

Assessment is by a three-hour written paper, including questions requiring comments on extracts from primary sources, by short seminar presentations, and by an essay of 10,000 words.

British Cinema and the Second World War: Propaganda, Myth and Memory

Mark Glancy

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6736 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

During the Second World War, cinema-going in Britain was at an all-time high, and films offered a key means of informing and entertaining the public. This module investigates the use of film as a medium of propaganda during the war, as well as the pleasures that cinema-going offered wartime audiences, and the role that film has subsequently played in shaping the cultural memory of the war. The module considers a wide array of different historical sources. In addition to the substantial body of scholarly literature on this topic, these include primary sources such as Mass Observation reports, Ministry of Information files, the memoirs of filmmakers, audience surveys, film criticism, and a range of wartime and postwar films.

The French Civil War 1934-1944

Professor Julian Jackson

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6308

On 6 February 1934, demonstrators gathered in Paris to protest against government corruption. The demonstration turned violent, the police opened fire and fifteen people were killed. The left-wing government claimed that it has thwarted an attempted fascist uprising; the right wing claimed that the government had massacred innocent patriots. This event inaugurated ten years of instability and division in French politics. This is the civil war which this module examines. Among the themes to be covered are the impact of fascism in 1930s France, the reasons why France was defeated by Germany in 1940, the extent of collaboration with Germany, the role of the Resistance, anti-Semitism and the deportation of the Jews, and the Liberation of France in 1944 (looking in particular at the role of General de Gaulle). Finally it will look at changing way in which this period has been remembered in France since 1945 - how the myth that France was a nation of resisters has been replaced by a counter myth which is no less simplistic. One of the purposes of the module will be to examine the validity of these concepts of resistance and collaboration. The sources to be used will include diaries and memoirs, novels, (for example the famous Resistance novel The Silence of the Sea), films (The Great Illusion, The Crow) and official government archives.

Assessment is by a 10,000 word dissertation, two essays, and a three-hour exam.

The History and Historiography of the Holocaust

Zoe Waxman and Dan Stone

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/HS3264 and 3265

This is an unusual group 3 course in that its range of primary source material is very broad. Term 1 builds a conventional chronological narrative of the Holocaust, with students learning about the major events, such as the rise of Nazism and antisemitism, to ghettoisation and the development of the genocide process. The peculiarities of the Hungarian case, as well as resistance, are also examined. Term 2, however, broadens the course by encouraging students to think of the fierce debates in Holocaust historiography as being as important for our understanding of the events as 'historical study'. Hence, as well as using testimonies, diaries, literature, and photographs as historical evidence, several weeks are devoted to examining key historiographical debates, in order to help students understand the very real political stakes involved in writing about the Holocaust.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words (100%).

This course may not be taken simultaneously with the Group 2 course 'Memory and Modern Europe' (HS2297).

British Imperial Policy and Decolonisation, 1938-1964

Sarah Stockwell

Available in 2016-17

King's: 6AAH3017/6AAH3018

This course considers changing policies towards the colonial empire, and asks why did Britain cease to be an imperial power by the mid-1960s? It begins with the widespread colonial unrest of the 1930s. It then traces the evolution of ideas and policy under the impact of war and reconstruction, and concludes with the Macmillan government's reassessment of Britain's imperial role between 1957 and 1961. There are four main threads: (i) colonial political change leading to independence under nationalist governments; (ii) British attempts to anticipate this outcome; (iii) the relationship between decolonisation and Britain's own domestic or international circumstances; (iv) metropolitan debate, especially inside government, about colonial rule and imperial withdrawal. Special reference will be made to India, Malaya, the old coast, Kenya and Central Africa.

Sex and the African City: Gender and Urbanisation in Southern Africa

Tutor: Dr Rebekah Lee

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

GC: HT53036A/B

This course explores how the African city was both understood and experienced by its inhabitants. Throughout southern Africa, the 20th century was a time of rapid urbanisation and profound social and political change. Within this historical context, we examine how women and men differently negotiated the transition to urban life. Key themes include: gender relations and family structures; sexuality, race and ethnicity; religion and ritual; informal economies and livelihood strategies; health and development; urban politics and resistance. We consider the formation of new urban identities and we explore, through in-depth analysis of primary source material, how language and narrative gave voice to these changing identities. The chronological range of the course begins with the mineral discoveries of the late 19th century and extends to present-day debates around the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The geographical focus is mainly South Africa, but historical and cultural material from present-day Zambia, Lesotho, Botswana and Zimbabwe are also incorporated.

Teaching is by weekly seminars, which include student presentations and discussion. Students are required to submit three essays, and to write analyses of extracts from the set texts.

Assessment is by one three-hour examination (100%) and a dissertation of 10,000 words (100%).

Politics and Society in Palestine from c.1900 to 1948

Vanessa Martin

Not available in 2017-18

RH: 47/HS3262 and 3263

This course looks at the interaction of politics and society in Palestine from the late Ottoman period until the establishment of the state of Israel. What was the impact of the politics of the West upon society in Palestine in the late Ottoman period? How did different social and religious groups react? What were the different interpretations of Zionism? What can we learn from the documents about them? Another theme we examine from study of the texts is the struggle of the British to control the situation and build a state in Palestine. How did the Arabs respond? We look at the forms of modern organisation and ideology they used and the problems of Arab identity and nationalism at both the local and regional level. Texts written by both Arab and Jewish women are examined to compare their role in political and social developments. The changes generated by the World Wars are a further theme, and include the debate on the impact of terrorism, as well as the effect of the growing involvement of America.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%) and the coursework unit by an essay of 10,000 words (100%).

The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 1935-1955

John Kirk

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3340/HS3341

This course examines the origins of the civil rights movement from 1935 to 1955 set against the backdrop of the New Deal, the Second World War, and the Cold War. The course focuses on the development of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) legal strategy for racial change in the courts, devised and implemented by NAACP lawyers Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall, which paved the way for the emergence of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It assesses critical campaigns in areas such as the equalization of teachers’ salaries; voting rights; lynching and criminal justice; and the desegregation of universities, transportation, and housing. Finally, it examines the NAACP’s role in the Brown v Board of Education (1954) school desegregation case, regarded by many as the most important U.S. Supreme Court ruling of the twentieth century.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Malcolm X and African American Islam

Dawn-Marie Gibson

Not available in 2017-18

RH: HS3367/HS3368

This course will provide students with a detailed, intensive and thorough examination of the origins and development of African American Islam. The course examines the formative years of the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1930s Detroit and the debates that surround the identity of the group’s founder, W.D Fard Muhammad. This course focuses largely on Malcolm X and assesses his career in the NOI, commercialisation in the early 1990s and his contested legacy. The course will provide students with an intensive overview of the debates that relate to Malcolm’s autobiography and his split from the NOI in 1964. The course will also introduce students to recent studies that explore the work of women in the original NOI and the organization’s relationship with Muslim communities in and beyond the US. The second half of the course focuses rather heavily on the resurrected NOI which has been led by Louis Farrakhan since 1977. Topics within this half of the course will include a detailed examination of the Million Man March in 1995, Louis Farrakhan’s leadership, racial politics and women’s work and leadership in his organization.

The course will be examined by an Oral Presentation, 3-hour Exam and 10,000-word Dissertation.

Women, Family and Work in Post-War Britain

Dr Helen McCarthy

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6742 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

The middle decades of the twentieth century witnessed important changes in the lives of British women, particularly in relation to marriage, motherhood and paid work. This was an era of declining family size and early marriage, of growing affluence and the welfare state, and of increasing employment amongst mothers. Through an intensive engagement with personal testimonies, sociological texts, government records, the popular press and other sources, this special subject will explore the drivers behind these changes, how they were framed and understood in political and sociological debates, and how they were experienced by women from different social, educational and ethnic groups. We will engage with key historiographical, conceptual and methodological problems, from the impact of the Second World War on gender roles and the characterisation of the 1950s as a period of social conservatism, to the challenges – highlighted by feminist historians - of reconstructing women’s agency, desires and needs in the past.

The course will be assessed by two essays (2,500 words each), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Talking Cures and Troubles: The Oral History of Health and Medicine in Britain, c.1948-2000

Dr Graham Smith

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH (Egham): HS3373 and HS3374

The course will explore the way health professionals and patients have remembered the history of medicine and health care provision under the NHS. In addition to using texts discussing the theories of remembering (narrating memory) in oral history and the history of the NHS, the course will utilise a wide range of oral history sources including collections of interviews available through digital archives (e.g. Wellcome Trust, British Library Sound Archive, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Archives, DIPEx, Hospice Oral History Archive).The course will be organised thematically, with the first term focusing on the health professionals’ stories and histories, and the second on the patients’. Each term will begin with an introductory meeting at which students will be introduced to a range of methods for the reuse and interpretation of oral histories. Students will be able to choose from a range of oral and other sources to explore an aspect of modern medicine, medical science or health care under the NHS.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by the best two of four essays (40%), oral presentation (10%) and one three-hour examination (50%). The dissertation unit is assessed by a 10,000-word dissertation (100%).

The Clash of Powers and Cultures: Sino-American Relations during the Cold War

Chi-kwan Mark

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

RH: HS3279 and 3280

This course examines the complexities of Sino-American relations during the Cold War. It looks at how and why Communist China and the United States were transformed from hostile enemies in the 1950s and early 1960s into tacit allies by the late 1970s. Issues to be covered include their direct and indirect confrontations over Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam; the role of the Soviet Union in their changing relationship; and their divergent policies towards such issues as third World revolutions, nuclear weapons, and international trade. At a thematic level, the course will consider how ideology, personalities, domestic considerations, cultural stereotypes, and alliance politics influenced their respective policies and their dynamic interactions. You are expected to approach the subject not only from the American perspective but also from the Chinese viewpoint, by exploring both Western and Chinese (translated into English) primary sources, such as diplomatic documents, memoirs, public speeches, newspapers, and political cartoons. By placing Sino-American relations in the wider domestic and international contexts, this course will enhance your understanding of how the two great powers – and two different cultures – shaped, and were shaped by, the global Cold War.

Assessment for the taught unit will be by one three-hour examination with compulsory gobbets (90%) and an oral presentation (10%). The coursework unit is assessed by a 10,000-word essay.

The Kennedy Years

Professor Mark White

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6310

The core of this Special Subject is an examination of the presidency of John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. This will involve an analysis of his handling of foreign policy problems such as Cuba, Berlin, and Vietnam, as well as his approach to key domestic issues like civil rights. The module is broadly defined: the beginning of the module will deal with the Cold War background to JFK's presidency in the years 1945-1960, and Kennedy's pre-presidential career. The module will also include an assessment of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and also the careers of Robert and Edward Kennedy.

Assessment will be by: a 10,000 word dissertation; 3-hour examination; two 2000-word essays and two 1500-word gobbets.

Reinventing Ourselves: Psychology, Sex and Chemistry in Modern Britain

Rhodri Hayward

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6735 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

Historians and philosophers have claimed that a massive transformation in our idea of the self took place in the twentieth century. Novel concepts developed in psychology, physiology, endocrinology, psychiatry, sexology, ethology and psychoanalysis promoted a new sense of the complexity and tractability of identity in the British population. Focussing on the middle decades of the twentieth century, this course surveys the vast range of materials individuals drew upon in constructing their identities and the new political and social relationships that these made possible.

The course will be assessed by two 3500-word essays, one three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland

Dr Martyn Frampton

Not available in 2017-18

QMUL: HIST6321

The outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland in 1968-9 marked the start of over three decades of conflict in the province. During that time, some three and a half thousand people lost their lives, thousands more were injured and the fabric of society was irrevocably altered. This module will explore in depth, the phenomenon that has become known euphemistically as 'the Troubles'. It will examine the motivations and mental frameworks of the respective protagonists in the conflict - Irish Republicans, Loyalists, Moderate Nationalists and Unionists and the British and Irish governments. Attention will be paid to the internal culture of the paramilitary organisations that so disfigured Northern Ireland in this period, as well as to the impact these groups had on society. Amongst the key questions to be explored are those of, 'Why did 'the Troubles' begin?', 'Why were they sustained?' 'Why did they end?' and 'What did they mean?' In addition, consideration will be given to the way in which 'the Troubles' have been portrayed in popular culture and memory - and the wider influence of understandings of the conflict. The overall aim is to provide you with a thorough going understanding of why it was that this corner of the United Kingdom was plagued by over thirty years of political violence and the effect this had on those living there.

The course will be assessed by two essays, a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

The Sixties Cultural Revolution in Germany and Britain

Professor Christina von Hodenberg

Available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HIST6373

The years 1967/68 saw widespread student demonstrations and battles at barricades in West Germany and beyond. This special subject asks where the student protests came from, what their legacy was, and how they were related to the surge of alternative movements, second wave feminism and terrorism in the 1970s. In recent scholarship, '1968' stands for a longer period from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. To explore the specifics of the West German case, we will draw background comparisons with Britain.

We will engage with a wide range of primary sources (all translated into English). Students are welcome to write their dissertations on German or British topics.

The course will be assessed by primary source assessment (1,500 words), an essay (3,500 words), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

Britain's Thatcher

TBC

Not available in 2017-18

King's: 6AAH3011/6AAH3012

Polls showed that the term ‘Thatcher’s Britain’ was almost always thought to have unpleasant connotations. It is a curiously deceptive phrase – implying that Thatcher created some new country that was quite separate from the unselfish, happy, consensual place that had allegedly existed before she arrived in her space capsule from the distant planet Grantham. This course will examine Thatcherism as something rooted in British society. It will examine the crisis of the 1970s, the shifting economic policies of the 1980s, the great struggles (against the miners, the argentines) and Thatcher’s eventual fall. It will draw on resources that are almost entirely available on line. This means, in particular, the documents collected by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation (these documents will expand over the next decade as the Cabinet papers from the 1980s are released). It also means back numbers of the journal Marxism Today (often said to have invented the term ‘Thatcherism’. It also means publications released on line by bodies such as the Institute for Economic Affairs. The 1970s and 1980s will be the front line of archival research on modern Britain for the next few years and it is hoped that this course will appeal particularly to those are contemplating postgraduate research.

The course will be examined by one three-hour paper and an essay of 10,000 words.

Making Thatcher's Britain: The Thatcher Revolution, 1975-1997

Dr Robert Saunders

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6344

Almost a quarter of a century since her resignation, Margaret Thatcher remains one of the most controversial figures in modern British history. This module challenges the myths of both Right and Left, setting the Thatcher governments in their social, political and cultural context. Drawing on newly released archives from both Britain and America, and on an array of literary, cultural and televisual sources, it assesses Thatcher not just as a politician but as a figure in popular culture. Students will explore the multiple ‘crises’ of the era – from the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and the miners’ strike to the Cold War, the Apartheid struggle and the AIDs pandemic. They will assess the relationship between Thatcher and Reagan, the rise of ‘Euroscepticism’ and the struggle with the IRA in Northern Ireland, alongside great campaigning movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 'Red Wedge' and ‘Live Aid’. The module analyses the contested meanings of ‘Thatcherism’ and its influence on New Labour. It concludes by assessing whether there was a ‘Thatcher revolution’ at all, and why the period remains so central to contemporary political debate.

The course will be assessed by two essays (2,500-words each), one three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

The War on Terror

Dr James Ellison and Dr Martyn Frampton

Not available in 2017-18

Mondays, 2-4 pm

QMUL: HST6350

The War on Terror and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq remain the most controversial issues of our time. International public debate about their cause, course and effect remains acute yet it is often political, partisan and rarely balanced or complex. This module seeks to put 9/11 and its consequences in historical context by asking historically-informed questions about Western intervention in the Middle East and using an array of recently released primary sources to try to answer them. The aim is to approach the most contentious events of the contemporary era with the historian’s informed, detached understanding. That process begins with analysis of the origins of the modern Middle East and the post-Cold War conflicts which led to regional and international instability and the rise of terrorist organisations, principally Al-Qaeda. It goes on to consider the alliance developed by Tony Blair and George Bush after 9/11, the fight against the Taliban, regime change in Iraq and the disintegration of that country with all of its often tragic consequences for its peoples, the region and global security.

The course will be assessed by two essays (2,500 words each), a three-hour examination and a dissertation of 10,000 words.

France: Occupation, Resistance and Collaboration in the Second World War

Prof. Julian Jackson

Available in 2018-19

Mondays, 2-4 pm

HST6734 (plus HST6700 Dissertation)

In six weeks in the summer of 1940 the French army was decisively defeated by the forces of Nazi Germany. The French government signed an armistice and for the next four years France was partially occupied by the Germans. This was the most traumatic and controversial period of French modern French history. After the war a myth was created that the majority of the French population had 'resisted' the Germans but more recent research uncovered the extent of French collaboration. 75,000 Jews were deported and killed with the complicity of the French authorities. Through these themes and issues this module examines the validity of such concepts of 'resistance' and 'collaboration'. But it is impossible to understand the reactions of the French people to defeat and occupation without going back to the history of the 1930s. So the module opens with the events of 6 February 1934 when there was a violent riot in Paris in which 15 people were killed. The left-wing government claimed that it had thwarted an attempted fascist uprising; the right wing claimed that the government had massacred innocent patriots. This sparked off ten years of division in French politics, which descended into near civil war under the impact of the Occupation. The sources used include diaries and memoirs, novels (for example the famous Resistance novel 'The Silence of the Sea'), films ('The Great Illusion', 'The Crow') and official government archives. The module seeks to foster an awareness of international perspectives in a four-day excursion* to Paris, where students explore major sites, including the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Museum of Resistance, and consider how the German Occupation has been remembered in France. *Please note that students may be expected to make a financial contribution.

Group 3 Long Essays: Notes for Candidates

Long essays, which shall refer to texts, be fully documented and normally typewritten with double spacing, are to be on a topic or topics selected by the candidate and approved by the teacher of the course, and shall be submitted to the 'host' college by the deadline set by that college and notified to students.

The essays shall be either one essay of 10,000 words or two essays of 5,000 words (depending on the course). Candidates who significantly exceed or fall short of these word lengths are likely to be penalised. The word limit includes footnotes but not bibliography. A word count must be put on the title page, along with the candidate's examination number. The title page must also be signed by the teacher concerned, stating that the subject of the essay has his/her approval, unless previously approved by a Board of Examiners. This signature must be obtained before the end of the course. The candidate’s name must not appear anywhere on the essay but may be submitted on a separate loose sheet which is not bound into the essay.

Attention is drawn to the requirement in University General Regulations, Section II (Examination Tests), that for essays written in a candidate's own time, the work submitted by the candidate must be his or her own and any quotation from the published or unpublished work of other persons must be duly acknowledged: failure to observe this requirement will constitute an examination offence. In the light of this requirement, any candidate deemed by the examiners to be guilty of plagiarism will be held liable to the penalties incurred by cheating

Presentation

Books published by leading university presses are good models to follow on questions of style and usage. Where there is no general agreement (e.g. 'judgment' or 'judgement', '4 July 1776' or 'July 4, 1776'), candidates should use their own conventions. It is important that the essay should be internally consistent, whatever conventions are used. If abbreviations are used, a list of them should appear at the beginning.

Quotations

These require footnotes indicating their source. Long quotations (fifty words or more) may be given in separate blocks in single spacing, indented from the margin, without quotes. Use single quotation marks for all other quotations. (Double quotation marks only for quotes within quotations).

Footnotes

These should either be placed at the foot of the page on which they occur or be numbered in one sequence throughout and placed at the end of the essay.

First references to books and articles in footnotes should include the following details: for books, the author's full name, title of the book, place and date of publication, volume and page reference; for articles, the author and title, full name and the journal, volume number and year, page reference. Examples:

For additional references give the author's name and a shortened title (e.g. Kent, Election of 1827, p. 40). Ibid. ('the same reference') should be used only for immediately consecutive references. A short title is better than the abbreviation 'op. cit.'

Bibliography

A bibliography must follow the essay. This is a full list of material used in the essay. It should normally be set out in two parts: 'primary sources', manuscript and published, and 'secondary works' (books and articles). List both alphabetically and give books and articles in full, as for footnotes.

Checking

The examiners give much weight to the technical accuracy of the essay. Check very carefully for spelling mistakes, wrong quotations and errors of typing. Ensure that the footnote numbers correlate with those given in the main text.